OUR OLD HOME. — See page 63. ILLUSTRATED LIBRARY EDITION. OUR OLD HOME, AND SEPTIMIUS FELTON BY NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. TWO VOLUMES IN ONE BOSTON: JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY, LATH TICKNOR & FIELDS, AND FIELDS, OSGOOD, £ Co. I375- ; to Act of Congress, in the year t«7i by NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, b the Clerk VO«ce of the District Court of the District of LOAN STACK PRESS : WELCH, BIGELOW, & Co., CAMBRIDGE. Al 1875 OUR OLD HOME: A SERIES OF ENGLISH SKETCHES. 443 To FRANKLIN PIERCE, & SLIGHT MEMORIAL OF A COLLEGE FRIENDSHIP, PROLONGED THROUGH MANHOOD, AND RETAINING ALL ITS VITALITY IN OUR AUTUMNAL YEARS, £JH* Volume In Enscrffaeu BT NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE- CONTENTS. CONSULAR EXPERIENCES • • • • 9 LEAMINGTON SPA 49 ABOUT WARWICK 77 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN 106 LlCHFIELD AND TJTTOXETER 141 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON 163 NEAR OXFORD 195 SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS 225 A LONDON SUBURB 248 UP THE THAMES 282 OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY 320 Civic BANQUETS *58 TO A FRIEND. 1 HAVE not asked your consent, my dear General, to th foregoing inscription, because it would have been no inconsid erable disappointment to me had you withheld it ; for 1 have long desired to connect your name with some book of mine, in commemoration of an early friendship that* has grown old between two individuals of widely dissimilar pursuits and fortunes. I only wish that the offering were a worthier one than this volume of sketches, which certainly are not of a kind likely to prove interesting to a statesman in retirement, inasmuch as they meddle with no matters of policy or govern ment, and have very little to say about the deeper traits of national character. In their humble way, they belong entirely to aesthetic literature, and can achieve no higher success than to represent to the American reader a few of the external aspects of English scenery and life, especially those that are touched with the antique charm to which our countrymen are more susceptible than are the people among whom it is of native growth. I once hoped, indeed, that so slight a volume would not be all that I might write. These and other sketches, with which, in a somewhat rougher form than I have given them lu-re, my journal was copiously filled, were intended for the side-scenes a -id backgrounds and exterior adornment of a work of fic tion of which the plan had imperfectly developed itself in my mind, and into which I ambitiously proposed to convey more of various modes of truth than I could have grasped by a direct effort. Of course, I should not mention this abortive project, only that it has been utterly thrown aside and will X TO A FRIEND. never now be accomplished. The Present, the Immediate, the Actual, has proved too potent for me. It takes away not only my scanty faculty, but even my desire for imaginative composition, and leaves me sadly content to scatter a thousand peaceful fantasies upon the hurricane that is sweeping us all along with it, possibly, into a Limbo where our nation and its polity may be as literally the fragments of a shattered dream as my unwritten Romance. But I have far better hopes for our dear country; and for my individual share of the catastrophe, 1 afflict myself little, or not at all, and shall easily find room for the abortive work on a certain ideal shelf, where are re- posited many other shadowy volumes of mine, more in num ber, and very much superior in quality, to those which I hava succeeded in rendering actual. To return to these poor Sketches ; some of my friends have told me that they evince an asperity of sentiment towards the English people which I ought not to feel, and which it is highly inexpedient to express. The charge surprises me, be cause, if it be true, I have written from a shallower mood than I supposed. I seldom came into personal relations with an Englishman without beginning to like him, and feeling my favorable impression wax stronger with the progress of the acquaintance. I never stood in an English crowd without being conscious of hereditary sympathies. Nevertheless, it is undeniable that an American is continually thrown upon his national antagonism by some acrid quality in the moral atmosphere of England. These people think so loftily of themselves, and so contemptuously of everybody else, that it requires more generosity than I possess to keep always in per fectly good humor with them. Jotting down the little acrimo nies of the moment in my journal, and transferring them thence (when they happened to be tolerably well expressed) to these pages, it is very possible that I may have said things which a profound observer of national character would hesitate to sanction, though never any, I verily believe, that had not TO A FRIEND. XI more or less of truth. If they be true, there is no reason ia the world why they should not be said. Not an Englishman of them all ever spared America for courtesy's sake or kind ness ; nor, in my opinion, would it contribute in the least to our mutual advantage and comfort if we were to besmear one another all over with butter and honey. At any rate, wo must not judge of an Englishman's susceptibilities by our own, which, likewise, I trust, are of a far less sensitive texture than ormerly. And now farewell, my dear friend ; and excuse (if you think it needs any excuse) the freedom with which I thus publicly assert a personal friendship between a private individual and a statesman who has filled what was then the most august position in the world. But I dedicate my book to the Friend, and shall defer a colloquy with the Statesman till some calmer and sunnier hour. Only this let me say, that, with the record of your life in my memory, and with a sense of your character in my deeper consciousness as among the few things that time has left as it found them, I need no assurance that you continue faithful forever to that grand idea of an irrevocable Union, which, as you once told me, was the earli est that your brave father taught you. For other men there may be a choice of paths — for you, but one ; and it rests among my certainties that no man's loyalty is more steadfast, no man's hopes or apprehensions on behalf of our national existence more deeply heartfelt, or more closely intertwined with his possibilities of personal happiness, than those of FRANKLIN PIERCE. THE WAYSIDE, July 2, 1863. OUR OLD HOME. CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. THE Consulate of the United States, in my day, was located in Washington Buildings, (a shabby and smoke- stained edifice of four stories high, thus illustriously named in honor of our national establishment,) at the lower cor ner of Brunswick Street, contiguous to the Goree Ar cade, and in th*1 neighborhood of some of the oldest docks. This was by no means a polite or elegant portion of England's great commercial city, nor were the apart ments of the American official so splendid as to indicate the assumption of much consular pomp on his part. A narrow and ill-lighted staircase gave access to an equally narrow and ill-lighted passage-way on the first floor, at the extremity of which, surmounting a door-frame, ap peared an exceedingly stiff pictorial representation of the Goose and Gridiron, according to the English idea of those ever-to-be-honored symbols. The staircase and passage-way were often thronged, of a morning, with a set of beggarly and piratical-looking scoundrels, (I do no wrong to our own countrymen in styling them so, for not one in twenty was a genuine American,) purporting to 10 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. belong to our mercantile marine, and chiefly compose i of Liverpool Blackballers and the scum of every man time nation on earth ; such being the seamen by whose assist ance we then disputed the navigation of the world with England. These specimens of a most unfortunate class of people were shipwrecked crews in quest of bed, board, and clothing, invalids asking permits for the hospital, bruised and bloody -wretches complaining of ill-treatment by their officers, drunkards, desperadoes, vagabonds, and cheats, perplexingly intermingled with an uncertain pro portion of reasonably honest men. All of them (save here and there a poor devil of a kidnapped landsman in his shore-going rags) wore red flannel shirts, in which they had sweltered or shivered throughout the voyage, and all required consular assistance in one form or another. Any respectable visitor, if he could make up his mind to elbow a passage among these sea-monsters, was admit ted into an outer office, where he found more of the same species, explaining their respective wants or grievances to the Vice- Consul and clerks, while their shipmates awaited their turn outside the door. Passing through this exterior court, the stranger was ushered into an in ner privacy, where sat the Consul himself, ready to give personal attention to such peculiarly difficult and more important cases as might demand the exercise of (what tve will courteously suppdse to be) his own higher judi cial or administrative sagacity. It was an apartment of very moderate size, painted in imitation of oak, and duskily lighted by two windows looking across a by-street at the rough brick-side of an immense cotton warehouse, a plainer and uglier structure CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 11 than ever was built in America. On the walls of the room hung a large map of the United States, (as they were, twenty years ago, but seem little likely to be, twenty years hence,) and a similar one of Great Britain, with its territory so provokingly compact, that we may expect it to sink sooner than sunder. Farther adornments were some rude engravings of our naval victories in the war of 1812, together with the Tennessee State House, and a Hudson River steamer, and a colored, life-size lithograph of General Taylor, with an honest hideousness of aspect, occupying the place of honor above the mantel piece. On the top of a bookcase stood a fierce and ter rible bust of General Jackson, pilloried in a military collar which rose above his ears, and frowning forth im- mitigably at any Englishman who might happen to cross the threshold. I am afraid, however, that the truculence of the old General's expression was utterly thrown away on this stolid and obdurate race of men ; for, when they occasionally inquired whom this work of art represented, I was mortified to find that the younger ones had never heard of the battle of New Orleans, and that their elders had either forgotten it altogether, or contrived to mis- remember, and twist it wrong end foremost into something like an English victory. They have caught from the old Romans (whom they resemble in so many other charac teristics) this excellent method of keeping the national glory intact by sweeping all defeats and humiliations clean out of their memory. Nevertheless, my patriotism for bade me to take down either the bust or the pictures, both because it seemed no more than right that an Amer ican Consulate (being a little patch of our nationality im bedded into the soil and institutions of England) should 12 CONSU1AR EXPERIENCES. fairly represent the American taste in the fine arts, and because these decorations reminded me so delightfully of an old-fashioned American barber's shop. One truly English object was a barometer hanging on the wall, generally indicating one or another degree of disagreeable weather, and so seldom pointing to Fair, that I began to consider that portion of its circle as made superfluously. The deep chimney, with its grate of bitu minous coal, was English too, as was also the chill tem perature that sometimes called for a fire at mid-summer, and the foggy or smoky atmosphere which often, between November and March, compelled me to set the gas aflame at noonday. I am not aware of omitting any thing important in the above descriptive inventory, un less it be some bookshelves filled with octavo volumes of the American Statutes, and a good many pigeon-holes stuffed with dusty communications from former Secreta ries of State, and other official documents of similar value, constituting part of the archives of the Consulate, which I might have done my successor a favor by flinging into the coal-grate. Yes ; there was one other article demand ing prominent notice : the consular copy of the New Testament, bound in black morocco, and greasy, I fear, with a daily succession of perjured kisses ; at least, I can hardly hope that all the ten thousand oaths, administered by me between two breaths, to all sorts of people and 01 all manner of worldly business, were reckoned by the swearer as if taken at his soul's peril. Such, in short, was the dusky and stifled chamber in which I spent wearily a considerable portion of more than four good years of my existence. At first, to be quite frank with the reader, I looked upon it as nc ^to CONSULAR EXPEDIENCES. 13 gether fit to be tenanted by the commercial representative of so great and prosperous a country as the United States then were ; and I should speedily have transferred my headquarters to airier and loftier apartments, except for the prudent consideration that my Government would have left me thus to support its dignity at my own per sonal expense. Besides, a long line of distinguished pred ecessors, of whom the latest is now a gallant general under the Union banner, had found the locality good enough for them ; it might certainly be tolerated, there fore, by an individual so little ambitious of external mag nificence as myself. So I settled quietly down, striking some of my roots into such soil as I could find, adapting myself to circumstances, and with so much success, that, though from first to last I hi\ted the very sight of the little room, I should yet have felt a singular kind of re luctance in changing it for a better. Hither, in the course of my incumbency, came a great variety of visitors, principally Americans, but including almost every other nationality on earth, especially the distressed and downfallen ones like those of Poland and Hungary. Italian bandits (for so they looked), pro- Bcribed conspirators from Old Spain, Spanish Ameri cans, Cubans who professed to have stood by Lopez and narrowly escaped his fate, scarred French soldiers of the Second Republic, — in a word, all sufferers, or pre tended ones, in the cause of Liberty, all people homeless in the widest sense, those who never had a country or had lost it, those whom their native land had impatiently Hung off for planning a better system of things than they were born to, — a multitude of these, and, doubtless, a*v equal numtar of jail-birds, outwardJv ot the same feathu 14 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. Bought the American Consulate, in hopes of at /ast a bit of bread, and, perhaps, to beg a passage tx. tne blessed shores of Freedom. In most cases there was nothing, and in any case distressingly little, to be done for them ; neither was I of a proselyting disposition, nor desired to make my Consulate a nucleus for the vagrant discontents of other lands. And yet it was a proud thought, a forcible appeal to the sympathies of an Amer ican, that these unfortunates claimed the privileges of citizenship in our Republic on the strength of the very same noble misdemeanors that had rendered them out laws to their native despotisms. So I gave them what small help I could. Methinks the true patriots and mar tyr-spirits of the whole world should have been conscious of a pang near the heart, when a deadly blow was aimed at the vitality of a country which they have felt to be their own in the last resort. As for my countrymen, I grew better acquainted with many of our national characteristics during those four years than in all my preceding life. Whether brought more strikingly out by the contrast with English man ners, or that my Yankee friends assumed an extra pecu liarity from a sense of defiant patriotism, so it was that their tones, sentiments, and behavior, even their figures and cast of countenance, all seemed chiselled in sharper angles than ever I had imagined them to be at home. It impressed me with an odd idea of having somehow lost the property of my own person, when I occasionally heard one of them speaking of me as " my Consul ! " They often came to the Consulate in parties of half a dozen or more, on no business whatever, but merely to subject their public servant to a rigid examination, and CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 15 see how he was getting on with his duties. These inter views were rather formidable, being characterized by a certain stiffness which I felt to be sufficiently irksome at the moment, though it looks laughable enough in the retrospect. It is my firm belief that these fellow-citizens, possessing a native tendency to organization, generally halted outside of the door to elect a speaker, chairman, or moderator, and thus approached me with all the for malities of a deputation from the American people. After salutations on both sides, — abrupt, awful, and severe on their part, and deprecatory on mine, — and the national ceremony of shaking hands being duly gone through with, the interview proceeded by a series of calm and well-considered questions or remarks from the spokes man, (no other of the guests vouchsafing to utter a word,) and diplomatic responses from the Consul, who sometimes found the investigation a little more searching than he liked. I flatter myself, however, that, by much practice, I attained considerable skill in this kind of intercourse, the art of which lies in passing off common places for new and valuable truths, and talking trash and emptiness in such a way that a pretty acute auditor might mistake it for something solid. If there be any better method of dealing with such junctures, — when talk is to be created out of nothing, and within the scope of several minds at once, so that you cannot apply your self to your interlocutor's individuality, — I have not learned it. Sitting, as it were, in the gateway between the old world and the new, where the steamers and packets landed the greater part of our wandering countrymen, and received them again when their wanderings were 16 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. done, I saw that no people on earth have such vagabond habits as ourselves. The Continental races never travel at all, if they can help it ; nor does an Englishman ever think of stirring abroad, unless he has the money to spare, or proposes to himself some definite advantage from the journey; but it seemed to me that nothing was more common than for a young American deliberately to spend nil his resources in an aesthetic peregrination about Eu rope, returning with pockets nearly empty to begin the world in earnest. It happened, indeed, much oftener than was at all agreeable to myself, that their funds held out just long enough to bring them to the door of my Consulate, where they entered as if with an undeniable right to its shelter and protection, and required at my hands to be sent home again. In my first simplicity, — finding them gentlemanly in manners, passably educated, and only tempted a little beyond their means by a laud able desire of improving and refining themselves, or, perhaps, for the sake of getting better artistic instruction in music, painting, or sculpture, than our country could supply, — I sometimes took charge of them on my pri vate responsibility, since our Government gives itself no trouble about its stray children, except the seafaring class. But, after a few such experiments, discovering that none of these estimable and ingenuous young men, however trustworthy they might appear, ever dreamed of reimbursing the Consul, I deemed it expedient to take another course with them. Applying myself to some friendly shipmaster, I engaged homeward passages on their behalf, with the understanding that they were to make themselves serviceable on shipboard ; and I re member several very pathetic appeals from painters and CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 17 musicians, touching the damage which their artistic fin gers were likely to incur from handling the ropes. But my observation of so many heavier troubles left me very litile tenderness for their finger-ends. In time, I grew to be reasonably hard-hearted, though it never was quite possible to leave a countryman with no shelter save an English poor-house, when, as he invariably averred, he had only to set foot on his native soil to be possessed of ample funds. It was my ultimate conclusion, however, that American ingenuity may be pretty safely left to itself, and that, one way or another, a Yankee vagabond is certain to turn up at his own threshold, if he has any, without help of a consul, and perhaps be taught a lesson of foresight that may profit him hereafter. Among these stray Americans, I met with no other case so remarkable as that of an old man, who was in the habit of visiting me once in a few months, and soberly affirmed that he had been wandering about England more than a quarter of a century, (precisely twenty-seven years, 1 think,) and all the while doing his utmost to get home again. Herman Melville, in his excellent novel or biography ol' " Israel Potter," has an idea somewhat sim ilar to this. The individual now in question was a mild and patient, but very ragged and pitiable old fellow, shabby beyond description, lean and hungry-looking, but with a large and somewhat red nose. He made no com plaint of his ill-fortune, but only repeated in a quiet voice, with a pathos of which he was himself evidently uncon scious, — "I want to get home to Ninety-second Street, Philadelphia." He described himself as a printer by trade, and said that he had come over when he was a younger man, in the hope of bettering himself, and for 2 18 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. the sake of seeing the Old Country, but had never since been rich enough to pay his homeward passage. Hia manner and accent did not quite convince me that he was an American, and I told him so ; but he steadfastly affirmed, — " Sir, I was born and have lived in Ninety- second Street, Philadelphia," and then went on to describe some public edifices and other local objects with which he used to be familiar, adding, with a simplicity that touched me very closely, " Sir, I had rather be there than here ! " Though I still manifested a lingering doubt, he took no offence, replying with the same mild depression as at first, and insisting again and again on Ninety-second Street. Up to the time when I saw him, he still got a little occasional job-work at his trade, but subsisted mainly on such charity as he met with in his wanderings, shifting from place to place continually, and asking assistance to convey him to his native land. Possibly he was an impostor, one of the multitudinous shapes of English vagabondism, and told his falsehood with such powerful simplicity, because, by many repeti tions, he had convinced himself of its truth. But if, as I believe, the tale was fact, how very strange and sad was this old man's fate ! Homeless on a foreign shore, looking always towards his country, coming again and again to the point whence so many were setting sail for it, — so many who would soon tread in Ninety-second Street, — losing, in this long series of years, some of the distinctive characteristics of an American, and at last dying and surrendering his clay to be a portion of the soil whence he could not escape in his lifetime. Pie appeared to see that he had moved me, but did not attempt to press his advantage with any new argu CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 19 inent, or any varied form of entreaty. He had bat scanty and scattered thoughts in his gray head, and in the intervals of those, like the refrain of an old ballad, came in the monotonous burden of his appeal, — "If I could only find myself in Ninety-second Street, Phila delphia ! " But even his desire of getting home had ceased to be an ardent one, (if, indeed, it had not al ways partaken of the dreamy sluggishness of his char acter,) although it remained his only locomotive impulse, and perhaps the sole principle of life that kept his blood from actual torpor. The poor old fellow's story seemed to me almost as worthy of being chanted in immortal song as that of Odysseus or Evangeline. I took his case into deep con sideration, but dared not incur the moral responsibility of sending him across the sea, at his age, after so many years of exile, when the very tradition of him had passed away, to find his friends dead, or forgetful, or irretriev ably vanished, and the whole country become more truly a foreign land to liim than England was now, — and even Ninety-second Street, in the weedlike decay and growth of our localities, made over anew and grown unrecogniz able by his old eyes. That street, so patiently longed for, had transferred itself to the New Jerusalem, and he must seek it there, contenting his slow heart, mean while, with the smoke-begrimed thoroughfares of English towns, or the green country lanes and by-paths with which his wanderings had made him familiar ; for doubtless ho had a beaten track and was the "long-remembered beggar" now, with food and a roughly hospitable greeting ready for him at many a farm-house door, and his choice of 'odging under a score of haystacks. In America, nctl> 20 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. ing awaited him but that worst form of disappointment which comes under the guise of a long-cherished and late- accomplished purpose, and then a year or two of dry and barren sojourn in an almshouse, and death among stran gers at last, where he had imagined a circle of familiar faces. So I contented myself with giving him alms, which he thankfully accepted, and went away with bent shoulders and an .aspect of gentle forlornness ; returning upon his orbit, however, after a few months, to tell the same sad and quiet story of his abode in England for more than twenty-seven years, in all which time he had been endeavoring, and still endeavored as patiently as ever, to find his way home to Ninety-second Street, Philadelphia. I recollect another case, of a more ridiculous order, but still with a foolish kind of pathos entangled in it, which impresses me now more forcibly than it did at the moment. One day, a queer, stupid, good-natured, fat- faced individual came into my private room, dressed in a sky-blue, cut-away coat and mixed trousers, both gar ments worn and shabby, and rather too small for his overgrown bulk. After a little preliminary talk, he turned out to be a country shopkeeper, (from Connecti cut, I think,) who had left a nourishing business, and come over to England purposely and solely to have an interview with the Queen. Some years before he had named his two children, one for Her Majesty and the other for Prince Albert, and had transmitted photographs of the little people, as well as of his wife and himself, to the illustrious godmother. The Queen had gratefully acknowledged the favor in a letter under the hand of her private secretary. Nov^ th « sto opkeeper, like a greal CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 21 many other Americans, had long cherished a fantastic notion that he was one of the rightful heirs of a rich English estate ; and on the strength of Her Majesty's letter and the hopes of royal patronage which it inspired, he had shut up his little country-store and come over to claim his inheritance. On the voyage, a German fellow- passenger had relieved him of his money on pretence of getting it favorably exchanged, and had disappeared im mediately on the ship's arrival ; so that the poor fellow was compelled to pawn all his clothes except the remark ably shabby ones in which I beheld him, and in which (as he himself hinted, with a melancholy, yet good- natured smile) he did not look altogether fit to see the Queen. I agreed with him that the bobtailed coat and mixed trousers constituted a very odd-looking court-dress, and suggested that it was doubtless his present purpose to get back to Connecticut as fast as possible. But no ! The resolve to see the Queen was as strong in him as ever ; and it was marvellous the pertinacity with which he clung to it amid raggedness and starvation, and the earnestness of his supplication that I would supply him with funds for a suitable appearance at Windsor Castle. I never had so satisfactory a perception of a complete Looby before in my life ; and it caused me to feel kindly towards him, and yet impatient and exasperated on be half of common sense, which could not possibly tolerate that such an unimaginable donkey should exist. I laid his absurdity before him in the very plainest terms, but without either exciting his anger or shaking his resolu tion. u Oh, my dear man," quoth he, with good-natured placid, simple, and tearful stubbornness, " if you could but enter into my feelings and see the matter from beginning 22 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. to end as I see it ! " To confess the truth, I have since felt that I was hard-hearted to the poor simpleton, and that there was more weight in his remonstrance thnn T chose to be sensible of, at the time ; for, like many men who have been in the habit of making playthings or tools of their imagination and sensibility, I was too rigidly tenacious of what was reasonable in the affairs of real life. And even absurdity has its rights, when, as in this case, it has absorbed a human being's entire nature and purposes. I ought to have transmitted him to Mr. Buchanan, in London, who, being a good-natured old gentleman, and anxious, just then, to gratify the univer sal Yankee nation, might, for the joke's sake, have got him admittance to the Queen, who had fairly laid herself open to his visit, and has received hundreds of our coun trymen on infinitely slighter grounds. But I was inex orable, being turned to flint by the insufferable proximity of a fool, and refused to interfere with his business in any way except to procure him a passage home. I can see his face of mild, ridiculous despair, at this moment, and appreciate, better than I could then, how awfully cruel he must have felt my obduracy to be. For years and years, the idea of an interview with Queen Victoria had haunted his poor foolish mind ; and now, when he really stood on English ground, and the palace-door was hanging ajar for him, he was expected to turn back, a pennyless and bamboozled simpleton, merely because an iron-hearted consul refused to lend him thirty shillings (so low had his demand ultimately sunk) to buy a second- class ticket on the rail for London ! He visited the Consulate several times afterwards, subsisting on a pittance that I allowed him ir the hope CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 23 of gradually starving him back to Connecticut, assailing me with the old petition at every opportunity, looking shabbier at every visit, but still thoroughly good-tem pered, mildly stubborn, and smiling through his tears not without a perception of the ludicrousness of his own position. Finally, he disappeared altogether, and whither he had wandered, and whether he ever saw the Queen or wasted quite away in the endeavor, I never knew ; but I remember unfolding the " Times," about that period, \vith a daily dread of reading an account of a ragged Yankee's attempt to steal into Buckingham Palace, and how he smiled tearfully at his captors and besought them to introduce him to Her Majesty. I submit to Mr. Sec retary Seward that he ought to make diplomatic remon strances to the British Ministry, and require them to take such order that the Queen shall not any longer bewilder the wits of our poor compatriots by responding to their epistles and thanking them for their photographs. One circumstance in the foregoing incident — I mean the unhappy storekeeper's notion of establishing his claim to an English estate — was common to a great many other applications, personal or by letter, with which I was favored by my countrymen. The cause of this pe culiar insanity lies deep in the Anglo-American heart. After all these bloody wars and vindictive animosities, we have still an unspeakable yearning towards England. "When our forefathers left the old home, they pulled up many of their roots, but trailed along with them others, which were never snapt asunder by the tug of such a lengthening distance, nor have been torn out of the orig inal soil by jthe violence of subsequent struggles, nor sev ered ty the edge of the sword. Even so late as these 24 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. days, they remain entangled with our heart-strings, and might often have influenced our national cause like the tiller-ropes of a ship, if the rough gripe of England had been capable of managing so sensitive a kind of t machin ery. It has required nothing less than the boorishness, the stolidity, the self-sufficiency, the contemptuous jeal ousy, the half-sagacity, invariably blind of one eye and often distorted of the other, that characterize this strange people, to compel us to be a great nation in our own right, instead of continuing virtually, if not in name, a province of their small island. What pains did they take to shake us off, and have ever since taken to keep us wide apart from them ! It might seem their folly, but was really their fate, or, rather, the Providence of God, who has doubtless a work for us to do, in which the mas sive materiality of the English character would have been too ponderous a dead-weight upon our progress. And, besides, if England had been wise enough to twine our new vigor round about her ancient strength, her power would have been too firmly established ever to yield, in its due season, to the otherwise immutable law of imperial vicissitude. The earth might then have beheld the intolerable spectacle of a sovereignty and institutions, imperfect, but indestructible. Nationally, there has ceased to be any peril of so inaus picious and yet outwardly attractive an amalgamation But as an individual, the American is often conscious of the deep-rooted sympathies that belong more fitly to times gone by, and feels a blind, pathetic tendency to wander back again, which makes itself evident in such wild dreams as I have alluded to above, about English inher itances. A mere coincidence of names, (the Yankee CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 25 one, perhaps, having been assumed by legislative per mission,) a supposititious pedigree, a silver mug on which an anciently engraved coat-of-arms has been half scrubbed outj, a seal with an uncertain crest, an old yellow letter or document in faded ink, the more scantily legible the bet ter, — rubbish of this kind, found in a neglected drawer, has been potent enough to turn the brain of many an honest Republican, especially if assisted by an advertise ment for lost heirs, cut out of a British newspaper. There is no estimating or believing, till we come into a position to know it, what foolery lurks latent in the breasts of very sensible people. Remembering such sober extravagances, I should not be at all surprised to find that I am myself guilty of some unsuspected absurdity, that may appear to me the most substantial trait in my character. I might fill many pages with instances of this diseased American appetite for English soil. A respectable-look ing woman, well advanced in life, of sour aspect, exceed ingly homely, but decidedly New Englandish in figure and manners, came to my office with a great bundle of documents, at the very first glimpse of which I appre hended something terrible. Nor was I mistaken. The bundle contained evidences of her indubitable claim to the site on which Castle Street, the Town Hall, the Ex change, and all the principal business part of Liverpool, have long been situated ; and with considerable peremp- toriness, the good lady signified her expectation that I should take charge of her suit, and prosecute it to judg ment ; not, however, on the equitable condition of receiv ing half the value of the property recovered, (which, in case of complete success, would have made both of us ten 26 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. or twenty-fold millionnaires,) but without recompense or reimbursement of legal expenses, solely as an incident ot my official duty. Another time came two ladies, bearing a letter of emphatic introduction from his Excellency the Governor of their native State, who testified in most satisfactory terms to their social respectability. They were claimants of a great estate in Cheshire, and announced themselves as blood-relatives of Queen Vic toria, — a point, however, which they deemed it expe dient to keep in the background until their territorial rights should be established, apprehending that the Lord High Chancellor might otherwise be less likely to come to a fair decision in respect to them, from a probable dis inclination to admit new members into the royal kin. Upon my honor, I imagine that they had an eye to the possibility of the eventual succession of one or both of them to the crown of Great Britain through superior ity of title over the Brunswick line; although, being maiden ladies, like their predecessor Elizabeth, they could hardly have hoped to establish a lasting dynasty upon the throne. It proves, I trust, a certain disinter estedness on my part, that, encountering them thus in the dawn of their fortunes, I forbore to put in a plea for a future dukedom. Another visitor of the same class was a gentleman of refined manners, handsome figure, and remarkably intel lectual aspect. Like many men of an adventurous cast, he had so quiet a deportment, and such an apparent dis inclination to general sociability, that you would have fancied him moving always along some peaceful and secluded walk of life. Yet, literally from his first hour, he had been tossed upon the surges of a most varied and CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 27 tumultuous existence, having been born at sea, of Amer ican parentage, but on board of a Spanish vessel, and spending many of the subsequent years in voyages, trav els, and outlandish incidents and vicissitudes, which, methought, had hardly been paralleled since the days of Gulliver or De Foe. When his dignified reserve was overcome, he had the faculty of narrating these adven tures with wonderful eloquence, working up his descrip tive sketches with such intuitive perception of the picturesque points that the whole was thrown forward with a positively illusive effect, like matters of your own visual experience. In fact, they were so admirably done that I could never more than half believe them, because the genuine affairs of life are not apt to transact them selves so artistically. Many of his scenes were laid in the East, and among those seldom visited archipelagoes of the Indian Ocean, so that there was an Oriental fra grance breathing through his talk and an odor of the Spice Islands still lingering in his garments. He had much to say of the delightful qualities of the Malay pirates, who, indeed, carry on a predatory warfare against the ships of all civilized nations, and cut every Christian throat among their prisoners ; but (except for deeds of that character, which are the rule and habit of their life, and matter of religion and conscience with them,) they are a gentle-natured people, of primitive innocence aiu1 integrity. But his best story was about a race of men, (if men they were,) who seemed so fully to realize Swift's wicked fable of the Yahoos, that my friend was much exercised with psychological speculations whether or no they had any souls. They dwelt in the wilds of Ceylon, 28 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. like other savage beasts, hairy, and spotted with tufts of fur, filthy, shameless, weaponless, (though warlike in their individual bent,) tool-less, houseless, language-less, except for a few guttural sounds, hideously dissonant, whereby they held some rudest kind of communication among themselves. They lacked both memory and fore- eight, and were wholly destitute of government, social institutions, or law or rulership of any description, except the immediate tyranny of the strongest ; radically un tamable, moreover, save that the people of the country managed to subject a few of the less ferocious and stupid ones to out-door servitude among their other cattle. They were beastly in almost all their attributes, and that to such a degree that the observer, losing sight of any \ink betwixt them and manhood, could generally witness |heir brutalities without greater horror than at those of some disagreeable quadruped in a menagerie. And yet, at times, comparing what were the lowest general traits in his own race, with what was highest in these abomi nable monsters, he found a ghastly similitude that half compelled him to recognize them as human brethren. After these Gulliverian researches, my agreeable ac quaintance had fallen under the ban of the Dutch gov ernment, and had suffered (this, at least, being matter of fact) nearly two years' imprisonment with confiscation of a large amount of property, for which Mr. Belmont, our minister at the Hague, had just made a peremptory demand of reimbursement and damages. Meanwhile, since arriving in England on his way to the United States, he had been providentially led to inquire into the circumstances of his birth on shipboard, and had discov ered that not himself alone, but another baby, had come CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 29 into the \\rorld during the same voyage of the proliiic ves sel, and that there were almost irrefragable reasons for believing that these two children had been assigned to the wrong mothers. Many reminiscences of his early days confirmed him in the idea that his nominal parents were aware of the exchange. The family to which he felt authorized to attribute his lineage was that of a nobleman, in the picture-gallery of whose country-seat (whence, if I mistake not, our adventurous friend had just returned) he had discovered a portrait bearing a striking resemblance to himself. As soon as he should have reported the outrageous action of the Dutch gov ernment to President Pierce and the Secretary of State, and recovered the confiscated property, he purposed to return to England and establish his claim to the noble man's title and estate. I had accepted his Oriental fantasies, (which, indeed, to do him justice, have been recorded by scientific societies among the genuine phenomena of natural history,) not as matters of indubitable credence, but as allowable specimens of an imaginative traveller's vivid coloring and rich embroidery on the coarse texture and dull neutral tints of truth. The English romance was among the latest communications that he intrusted to my private car ; and as soon as I heard the first chapter, — so won derfully akin to what I might have wrought out of my own head, not unpractised in such figments, — I began to repent having made myself responsible for the future nobleman's passage homeward in the next Collins steamer. Nevertheless, should his English rent-roll fall a little behindhand, his Dutch claim for a hundred thousand dollars was certainly in the hands of our gov- 30 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. ernment, and might at least be valuable to the extent of thirty pounds, which I had engaged to pay on his behalf. But I have reason to fear that his Dutch riches turned out to be Dutch gilt or fairy gold, and his English coun try-seat a mere castle in the air, — which I exceedingly regret, for he was a delightful companion and .1 very gentlemanly man. A Consul, in his position of universal responsibili .y, the general adviser and helper, sometimes finds himself compelled to assume the guardianship of personages who, in their own sphere, are supposed capable of superintend ing the highest interests of whole communities. An elderly Irishman, a naturalized citizen, once put the desire and expectation of all our penniless vagabonds into a very suitable phrase, by pathetically entreating me to be a " father to him ; " and, simple as I sit scrib bling here, I have acted a father's part, not only by scores of such unthrifty old children as himself, but by a progeny of far loftier pretensions. It may be well for persons who are conscious of any radical weakness in their character, any besetting sin, any unlawful propen sity, any unhallowed impulse, which (while surrounded with the manifold restraints that protect a man from that treacherous and lifelong enemy, his lower self, in the circle of society where he is at home) they may have succeeded in keeping under the lock and key of strides propriety, — it may be well for them, before seeking the perilous freedom of a distant land, released from the watchful eyes of neighborhoods and coteries, lightened of that wearisome burden, an immaculate name, and bliss fully obscure after years of local prominence, — it may be well for such individuals to know that when they set CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 31 toot on a foreign shore, the long-imprisoned Evil, scenting a wild license in the unaccustomed atmosphere, is apt to grow riotous in its iron cage. It rattles the rusty bar riers with gigantic turbulence, and if there be an infirm joint anywhere in the framework, it breaks madly forth, compressing the mischief of a lifetime into a little space. A parcel of letters had been accumulating at the Con sulate for two or three weeks, directed to a certain Doctor of Divinity, who had left America by a sailing-packet and was still upon the sea. In due time, the vessel arrived, and the reverend Doctor paid me a visit. Ho was a fine-looking middle-aged gentleman, a perfect model of clerical propriety, scholar-like, yet with the air of a man of the world rather than a student, though overspread with the graceful sanctity of a popular metropolitan divine, a part of whose duty it might be to exemplify the natural accordance between Christianity and good-breed ing. He seemed a little excited, as an American is apt to be on first arriving in England, but conversed with intelligence as well as animation, making himself so agreeable that his visit stood out in considerable relief from the monotony of my daily commonplace. As I learned from authentic sources, he was somewhat distin guished in his own region for fervor and eloquence in the pulpit, but was now compelled to relinquish it temporarily lor the purpose of renovating his impaired health by an extensive tour in Europe. Promising to dine with me, he took up his bundle of letters and went away. The Doctor, however, failed to make his appearance at dinner-time, or to apologize the next day for his absence ; and in the course of a day or two more, I forgot all about him, concluding that he must have set forth on his con- 32 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. tinental travels, the plan of which he had sketched out at our interview. But, by and by, I received a call from the master of the vessel in which he had arrived. He was in some alarm about his passenger, whose luggago remained on shipboard, but of whom nothing had been heard or seen since the moment of his departure from the Consulate. We conferred together, the Captain and I, about the expediency of setting the police on the traces (if any were to be found) of our vanished friend ; but it struck me that the good Captain was singularly reticent, and that there was something a little mysterious in a few points that he hinted at, rather than expressed ; so that, scrutinizing the affair carefully, I surmised that the inti macy of life on shipboard might have taught him more about the reverend gentleman than, for some reason or other, he deemed it prudent to reveal. At home, in our native country, I would have looked to the Doctor's per sonal safety and left his reputation to take care of itself, knowing that the good fame of a thousand saintly clergy men would amply dazzle out any lamentable spot on a single brother's character. But in scornful and invidious England, on the idea that the credit of the sacred oifice was measurably intrusted to my discretion, I could not endure, for the sake of American Doctors of Divinity generally, that this particular Doctor should cut an ignoble figure in the police reports of the English news papers, except at the last necessity. The clerical body, I flatter myself, will acknowledge that I acted on their own principle. Besides, it was now too late ; the mischief and violence, if any had been impending, were not of a kind which it requires the better part of a week to per petrate ; and to sum up the entire matter, I teit certain, CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 33 from a good deal of somewhat similar experience, that, if the missing Doctor still breathed this vital air, he would turn up at the Consulate as soon as his money should be stolen or spent. Precisely a week after this reverend person's disappear ance, there came to my office a tall, middle-aged gentle man in a blue military surtout, braided at the seams, but out at elbows, and as shabby as if the wearer had been bivouacking in it throughout a Crimean campaign. It was buttoned up to the very chin, except where three or four of the buttons were lost ; nor was there any glimpse of a white shirt-collar illuminating the rusty black cravat. A grisly moustache was just beginning to roughen the stranger's upper lip. He looked disreputable to the last degree, but still had a ruined air of good society glim mering about him, like a few specks of polish on a sword- blade that has lain corroding in a mud-puddle. I took him to be some American marine officer, of dissipated habits, or perhaps a cashiered British major, stumbling into the wrong quarters through the unrectified bewilder ment of last night's debauch. He greeted me, however, with polite familiarity, as though we had been previously acquainted ; whereupon I drew coldly back (as sensible people naturally do, whether from strangers or former friends, when too evidently at odds with fortune) and re quested to know who my visitor might be, and what was his business at the Consulate. " Am I then so changed ? " he exclaimed with a vast depth of tragic intonation ; and after a little blind and bewildered talk, behold ! the truth flashed upon me. It was the Doctor of Divinity ! If 1 had meditated a scene or a coup de theatre, I could not have contrived a more effectual one than by this simple 84 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES and genuine difficulty of recognition. The poor Divine must have felt that he had lost his personal identity through the misadventures of one little week. And, to say the truth, he did look as if, like Job, on account of his especial sanctity, he had been delivered over to the direst temptations of Satan, and proving weaker than the man of Uz, the Arch Enemy had been empowered to drag him through Tophet, transforming him, in the pro cess, from the most decorous of metropolitan clergymen into the rowdiest and dirtiest of disbanded officers. I never fathomed the mystery of his military costume, but conjectured that a lurking sense of fitness had induced him to exchange his clerical garments for this habit of a sinner ; nor can I tell precisely into what pitfall, not more of vice than terrible calamity, he had precipitated him self, — being more than satisfied to know that the out- oasts of society can sink no lower than this poor, de secrated wretch had sunk. The opportunity, I presume, does not often happen to a layman, of administering moral and religious reproof to a Doctor of Divinity; but finding the occasion thrust upon me, and the hereditary Puritan waxing strong in my breast, I deemed it a matter of conscience not to let it pass entirely unimproved. The truth is, I was un speakably shocked and disgusted. Not, however, that I was then to learn that clergymen are made of the same llesh and blood as other people, and perhaps lack one small safeguard which the rest of us possess, because they are aware of their own peccability, and therefore cannot look up to the clerical class for the proof of the possibility of a pure life on earth, with such reverential confidence as we are prone to do. But I remembered CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 35 the innocent faith of my boyhood, and the good old silver-headed clergyman, who seemed to me as much a saint then on earth as he is now in heaven, and partly for whose sake, through all these darkening year*, I re tain a devout, though not intact nor unwavering respect for the entire fraternity. What a hideous wrong, there fore, had the backslider inflicted on his brethren, and still more on me, who much needed whatever fragments of broken reverence (broken, not as concerned religion, but its earthly institutions and professors), it might yet be possible to patch into a sacred image ! Should all pul pits and communion-tables have thenceforth a stain upon them, and the guilty one go unrebuked for it? So I spoke to the unhappy man as I never thought myself war ranted in speaking to any other mortal, hitting him hard, doing my utmost to find out his vulnerable part, and prick him into the depths of it. And not without more effect than I had dreamed of, or desired ! No doubt, the novelty of the Doctor's reversed position, thus standing up to receive such a fulmination as the clergy have heretofore arrogated the exclusive right of inflicting, might give additional weight and sting to the words which I found utterance for. But there was another reason (which, had I in the least suspected it, would have closed my lips at once,) for his feeling mor bidly sensitive to the cruel rebuke that I administered. The unfortunate man had come to me, laboring under one of the consequences of his riotous outbreak, in the shape nf delirium tremens ; he bore a hell within the compass of his own breast, all the torments of which blazed up with tenfold inveteracy when I thus took upon myself the devil's office of stirring up the red-hot embers. His emotions, 86 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. as well as the external movement and expression of them by voice, countenance, and gesture, were terribly exag gerated by the tremendous vibration of nerves resulting from the disease. It was the deepest tragedy I ever wit nessed. I know sufficiently, from that one experience, how a condemned soul would manifest its agonies ; and for the future, if I have anything to do with sinners, I mean to operate upon them through sympathy, and not rebuke. What had I to do with rebuking him? The disease, long latent in his heart, had shown itself in a frightful eruption on the surface of his life. That was all ! Is it a thing to scold the sufferer for ? To conclude this wretched story, the poor Doctor of Divinity, having been robbed of all his money in this little airing beyond the limits of propriety, was easily persuaded to give up the intended tour and return to his bereaved flock, who, very probably, were thereafter con scious of an increased unction in his soul-stirring elo quence, without suspecting the awful depths into which their pastor had dived in quest of it. His voice is now silent. I leave it to members of his own profession to decide whether it was better for him thus to sin outright, and so to be let into the miserable secret what manner of man he was, or to have gone through life outwardly un spotted, making the first discovery of his latent evil at the judgment-seat. It has occurred to me that his dirt calamity, as botli he and I regarded it, might have beei the only method by which precisely such a man as him self, and so situated, could be redeemed. He has learned, ere now, how that matter stood. For a man, with a natural tendency to meddh,- with other people's business, there could not possibly bf- a CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 37 more congenial sphere than the Liverpool Consulate. For myself, I had never been in the habit of feeling that I could sufficiently comprehend any particular conjunction of circumstances with human character, to justify me in thrusting in my awkward agency among the intricate and unintelligible machinery of Providence. I have always hated to give advice, especially when there is a prospect of its being taken. It is only one-eyed people who love to advise, or have any spontaneous promptitude of action. When a man opens both his eyes, he generally sees about as many reasons for acting in any one way as in any other, and quite as many for acting in neither ; and is therefore likely to leave his friends to regulate their own conduct, and also to remain quiet as regards his especial affairs till necessity shall prick him onward. Neverthe less, the world and individuals flourish upon a constant succession of blunders. The secret of English practical success lies in their characteristic faculty of shutting one eye, whereby they get so distinct and decided a view of what immediately concerns them that they go stumbling towards it over a hundred insurmountable obstacles, and achieve a magnificent triumph without ever being aware of half its difficulties. If General McClellan could but have shut his left eye, the right one would long ago have guided us into Richmond. Meanwhile, I have strayed far away from the Consulate, where, as I was about to say, I was compelled, in spite of my disinclination, to im part both advice and assistance in multifarious affairs that did not personally concern me, and presume that I effected about as little mischief as other men in similar contingencies. The duties of the office carried me to prisons, police-courts, hospitals, lunatic asylums, coroner a 38 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. inquests, death-beds, funerals, and brought me in contact with insane people, criminals, ruined speculators, wild adventurers, diplomatists, brother-consuls, and all manner of simpletons and unfortunates, in greater number and variety than I had ever dreamed of as pertaining to America; in addition to whom there was an equivalent multitude of English rogues, dexterously counterfeiting the genuine Yankee article. It required great discrim ination not to be taken in by these last-mentioned scoun drels ; for they knew how to imitate our national traits, had been at great pains to instruct themselves as regarded American localities, and were not readily to be caught by a cross-examination as to the topographical features, public institutions, or prominent inhabitants, of the places where they pretended to belong. The best shibboleth I ever hit upon lay in the pronunciation of the word " been," which the English invariably make to rhyme with " green," and we Northerners, at least, (in accord ance, I think, with the custom of Shakspeare's time,) uni versally pronounce " bin." All the matters that I have been treating of, however, were merely incidental, and quite distinct from the real business of the office. A great part of the wear and tear of mind and temper resulted from the bad relations between the seamen and officers of American ships. Scarcely a morning passed, but that some sailor came to show the marks of his ill-usage on shipboard. Often, it was a whole crew of them, each with his broken head or livid bruise, and all testifying with one voice to a constant series of savage outrages during the voyage ; or, it might be, they laid an accusation of actual murdor, perpetrated by the first or second officers ivith many blows of CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 39 feieel-knuckles, a rope's end, or a marline-spike, or by the captain, in the twinkling of an eye, with a shot of his pistol. Taking the seamen's view of the case, you would suppose that the gibbet was hungry for the murderers. Listening to the Captain's defence, you would seem to discover that he and his officers were the humanest of mortals, but were driven to a wholesome severity by tho mutinous conduct of the crew, who, moreover, had them selves slain their comrade in the drunken riot and confu sion of the first day or two after they were shipped. Looked at judicially, there appeared to be no right side to the matter, nor any right side possible in so thoroughly vicious a system as that of the American mercantile marine. The Consul could do little, except to take depositions, hold forth the greasy Testament to be pro faned anew with perjured kisses, and, in a few instances of murder or manslaughter, carry the case before an Eng lish magistrate, who generally decided that the evidence was too contradictory to authorize the transmission of the accused for trial in America. The newspapers all over England contained paragraphs, inveighing against the cruelties of American shipmasters. The British Parlia ment took up the matter, (for nobody is so humane as John Bull, when his benevolent propensities are to be gratified by finding fault with his neighbor,) and caused Lord John Russell to remonstrate with our Government on the outrages for which it was responsible before the world, and which it failed to prevent or punish. The American Secretary of State, old General Cass, responded, with perfectly astounding ignorance of the subject, to the effect that the statements of outrages had probably been exaggerated, that the present laws of the United States 40 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. were quite adequate to deal with them, and that the in terference of the British Minister was uncalled for. The truth is, that the state of affairs was really very horrible, and could be met by no laws at that tune (or I presume now) in existence. I once thought of writing a pamphlet on the subject, but quitted the Consulate before iinding time to effect my purpose ; and all that phase of my life immediately assumed so dreamlike a consistency that I despaired of making it seem solid or tangible to the public. And now it looks distant and dim, like troubles of a century ago. The origin of the evil lay in the character of the seamen, scarcely any of whom were American, but the offscourings and refuse of all the seaports of the world, such stuff as piracy is made of, together with a considerable intermixture of returning emigrants, and a sprinkling of absolutely kidnapped American citizens. Even with such material, the ships were very inadequately manned. The shipmaster found himself upon the deep, with a vast responsibility of prop erty and human life upon his hands, and no means of salvation except by compelling his inefficient and demor alized crew to heavier exertions than could reasonably be required of the same number of able seamen. By law he had been intrusted with no discretion of judicious punishment ; he therefore habitually left the whole mat ter of discipline to his irresponsible mates, men often of scarcely a superior quality to the crew. Hence ensued a great mass of petty outrages, unjustifiable assaults, shame ful indignities, and nameless cruelty, demoralizing alike to the perpetrators and the sufferers; these enormities fell into the ocean between the two countries, and could be punished in neither. Many miserable stories come CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 41 back upon my memory as I write ; wrongs that were immense, but for which nobody could be held responsible, and which, indeed, the closer you looked into them, the more they lost the aspect of wilful misdoing and assumed that of an inevitable calamity. It was the fault of a sys tem, the misfortune of an individual. Be that as it may, however, there will be no possibility of dealing effectually with these troubles as long as we deem it inconsistent •vith our national dignity or interests to allow the Eng lish courts, under such restrictions as may seem fit, a jurisdiction over offences perpetrated on board our ves sels in mid-ocean. In such a life as this, the American shipmaster devel ops himself into a man of iron energies, dauntless cour age, and inexhaustible resource, at the expense, it must be acknowledged, of some of the higher and gentler traits which might do him excellent service in maintain ing his authority. The class has deteriorated of late years on account of the narrower field of selection, owing chiefly to the diminution of that excellent body of respect ably educated New England seamen, from the flower of whom the officers used to be recruited. Yet I found them, in many cases, very agreeable and intelligent companions, with less nonsense about them than landsmen usually have, eschewers of fine-spun theories, delighting in square and tangible ideas, but occasionally infested with preju dices that stuck to their brains like barnacles to a ship's bottom. I never could flatter myself that I was a gen eral favorite with them. One or two, perhaps, even now, would scarcely meet me on amicable terms. Endowed universally with a great pertinacity of will, they es pecially disliked the interference of a consul with their 42 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. management on shipboard; notwithstanding which 7 thrust in my very limited authority at every available opening, and did the utmost that lay in my power, though with lamentably small effect, towards enforcing a better kind of discipline. They thought, no doubt, (and on plausible grounds enough, but scarcely appreciating just that one little grain of hard New England sense, oddly thrown in among the flimsier composition of the Consul's character,) that he, a landsman, a bookman, and, as people said of him, a fanciful recluse, could not possibly understand anything of the difficulties or the necessities of a shipmaster's position. But their cold regards were rather acceptable than otherwise, for it is exceedingly awkward to assume a judicial austerity in the morning towards a man with whom you have been hobnobbing over night. With the technical details of the business of that great Consulate, (for great it then was, though now, I fear, wofully fallen off, and perhaps never to be revived in anything like its former extent,) I did not much interfere. They could safely be left to the treatment of two as faith ful, upright, and competent subordinates, both English men, as ever a man was fortunate enough to meet with, in a line of life altogether new and strange to him. I had come over with instructions to supply both their places with Americans, but, possessing a happy faculty of know ing my own interest and the public's, I quietly kept hold of them, being little inclined to open the consular doors to a spy of the State Department or an intriguer for my own office. The venerable Vice-Consul Mr. Pearce, had wit nessed the successive arrivals of a score of newly appointed Consuls, shadowy and short-lived dignitaries, and carried CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 43 his reminiscences back to the epoch of Consul Maury, who was appointed by Washington, and has acquired almost the grandeur of a mythical personage in the annals of the Consulate. The principal clerk, Mr. Wilding, who has since succeeded to the Vice- Consulship, was a man of English integrity — not that the English are more honest than ourselves, but only there is a certain sturdy reliable • ness common among them, which we do not quite so invariably manifest in just these subordinate positions — of English integrity, combined with American acuteness of intellect, quick-wittedness, and diversity of talent. It seemed an immense pity that he should wear out his life at a desk, without a step in advance from year's end to year's end, when, had it been his luck to be born on our side of the water, his bright faculties and clear probity would have insured him eminent success in whatever path he might adopt. Meanwhile, it would have been a sore mischance to me, had any better fortune on his part deprived me of Mr. Wilding's services. A fair amount of common sense, some acquaintance with the United States Statutes, an insight into character, a tact of management, a general knowledge of the world, and a reasonable but not too inveterately decided preference for his own will and judgment over those of interested people, — these natural attributes and moderate acquirements will enable a consul to perform many of his duties respectably, but not to dispense with a great variety of other qualifications, only attainable by long experience. Yet, I think, few consuls are so well accomplished. An appointment of whatever grade, in the diplomatic or con sular service of America, is too often what the English call a "job"; that is to say, it is made on private and 44 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. personal grounds, without a paramount eye to the public good or the gentleman's especial fitness for the position. It is not too much to say, (of course allowing for a brill iant exception here and there,) that an American never is thoroughly qualified for a foreign post, nor has time to make himself so, before the revolution of the political 'wheel discards him from his office. Our country wrongs itself by permitting such a system of unsuitable ap pointments, and, still more, of removals for no cause, just when the incumbent might be beginning to ripen into usefulness. Mere ignorance of official detail is of com paratively small moment ; though it is considered indis pensable, I presume, that a man in any private capacity shall be thoroughly acquainted with the machinery and operation of his business, and shall not necessarily lose his position on having attained such knowledge. But there are so many more important things to be thought of, in the qualifications of a foreign resident, that his technical dexterity or clumsiness is hardly worth men tioning. One great part of a consul's duty, for example, should consist in building up for himself a recognized position in the society where he resides, so that his local influence might be felt in behalf of his own country, and, so far as they are compatible (as they generally are to the utmost extent) for the interests of both nations. The foreign city should know that it has a permanent inhabitant and a hearty well-wisher in him. There are many conjunc tures (and one of them is now upon us) where a long- established, honored, and trusted American citizen, hold ing a public position under our Government in such a to\\n as Liverpool, might go far towards swaying and CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 45 directing the sympathies of the inhabitants. He might throw his own weight into the balance against mischief- makers ; he might have set his foot on the first little spark of malignant purpose, which the next wind may blow into a national war. But we wilfully give up all advantages of this kind. The position is totally beyond the attainment of an American ; there to-day, bristling all over with the porcupine quills of our Republic, and gone to-morrow, just as he is becoming sensible of the broader and more generous patriotism which might almost amal gamate with that of England, without losing an atom of its native force and flavor. In the changes that appear to await us, and some of which, at least, can hardly fail to be for good, let us hope for a reform in this matter. For myself, as the gentle reader would spare me the trouble of saying, I was not at all the kind of man to grow into such an ideal Consul as I have here suggested. I never in my life desired to be burdened with public influence. I disliked my office from the first, and never came into any good accordance with it. Its dignity, so far as it had any, was an incumbrance ; the attentions it drew upon me (such as invitations to Mayor's banquets and public celebrations of all kinds, where, to my horror, I found myself expected to stand up and speak) were — as I may say, without incivility or ingratitude, because there is nothing personal in that sort of hospitality — a bore! The official business was irksome, and often painful There was nothing pleasant about the whole affair except the emoluments ; and even those, never too bountifully reaped, were diminished by more than half in the second or third year of my incumbency. All this being true, I was quite prepared, in advance of the inauguration of 46 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. Mr. Buchanan, to send in my resignation. When my successor arrived, I drew the long, delightful breath which first made me thoroughly sensible what an unnatural life I had been leading, and compelled me to admire myself for having battled with it so sturdily. The new-comer proved to be a very genial and agreeable gentleman, an F. F. V., and, as he pleasantly acknowledged, a Southern Fire- Fater, — an announcement to which I responded, with similar good-humor and self-complacency, by parading my descent from an ancient line of Massachusetts Puritans. Since our brief acquaintanceship, my fire-eating friend has had ample opportunities to banquet on his favorite diet, hot and hot, in the Confederate service. For myself, as soon as I was out of office, the retrospect began to look unreal. I could scarcely believe that it was I, — that figure whom they called a Consul — but a sort of Double Gauger, who had been permitted to assume my aspect, under which he went through his shadowy duties with a tolerable show of efficiency, while my real self had lain, as regarded my proper mode of being and acting, in a state of suspended animation. The same sense of illusion still pursues me. There is some mistake in this matter. I have been writing about another man's consular experiences, with which, through some mysterious medium of transmitted ideas, I find my- %elf intimately acquainted, but in which I cannot possibly have had a personal interest. Is it not a dream alto gether ? The figure of that poor Doctor of Divinity looks wonderfully lifelike ; so do those of the Oriental adven turer with the visionary coronet above his brow, and the moonstruck visitor of the Queen, and the poor old wan derer, seeking his native country through English high- CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 47 ways and by-ways for almost thirty years ; and so would a hundred others that I might summon up with similar distinctness. But were they more than shadows ? Surely, I think not. Nor are these present pages a bit of intrusive autobiography. Let not the reader wrong me by supposing it. I never should have written with half such unreserve, had it been a portion of this life congenial with my nature, which I am living now, instead of a series of incidents and characters entirely apart from my own concerns, and on which the qualities personally proper to me could have had no bearing. Almost the only real incidents, as I see them now, were the visits of a young English friend, a scholar and a liter ary amateur, between whom and myself there sprung up an affectionate, and, I trust, not transitory regard. He used to come and sit or stand by my fireside, talking viva ciously and eloquently with me about literature and life, his own national characteristics and mine, with such kindly endurance of the many rough republicanisms wherewith I assailed him, and such frank and amiable assertion of all sorts of English prejudices and mistakes, that I understood his countrymen infinitely the better for him, and was almost prepared to love the intensest Eng lishman of them all, for his sake. It would gratify my cherished remembrance of this dear friend, if I could manage, without offending him, or letting the public know it, to introduce his name upon my page. Bright was the illumination of my dusky little apartment, as often as he made his appearance there ! The English sketches which I have been offering to the public, comprise a few of the more external and therefore more readily manageable things that I tool/ 48 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. note of, in many escapes from the imprisonment of my consular servitude. Liverpool, though not very delight ful as a place of residence, is a most convenient and admirable point to get away from. London is only five hours off by the fast train. Chester, the most curious town in England, with its encompassing wall, its ancient rows, and its venerable cathedral, is close at hand. North Wales, with all its hills and ponds, its noble sea- scenery, its multitude of gray castles and strange old villages, may be glanced at in a summer day or two. The lakes and mountains of Cumberland and Westmore land may be reached before dinner-time. The haunted and legendary Isle of Man, a little kingdom by itself, lies within the scope of an afternoon's voyage. Edinburgh or Glasgow are attainable over-night, and Loch Lomond betimes in the morning. Visiting these famous localities, and a great many others, I hope that I do not compro mise my American patriotism by acknowledging that I was often conscious of a fervent hereditary attachment to the native soil of our forefathers, and felt it to be our own Old Home. LEAMINGTON SPA IN the course of several visits and stays of considerable length wo acquired a homelike feeling towards Leaming ton, and came back thither again and again, chiefly be cause we had been there before. Wandering and wayside people, such as we had long since become, retain a few of the instincts that belong to a more settled way of life, and often prefer familiar and commonplace objects (for the very reason that they are so) to the dreary strangeness of scenes that might be thought much better worth the seeing. There is a small nest of a place in Leamington — at No. 10, Lansdowne Circus — upon which, to this day, my reminiscences are apt to settle as one of the coziest nooks in England or in the world ; not that it had any special charm of its own, but only that we stayed long enough to know it well, and even to grow a little tired of it. In my opinion, the very tediousness of home and friends makes a part of what we love them for ; if it be not mixed in sufficiently with the other elements of life, there may be mad enjoyment, but no happiness. The modest abode to which I have alluded forms ono of a circular range of pretty, moderate-sized, two-story houses, all built on nearly the same plan, and each pro vided with its little grass-plot, its flowers, its tufts of box trimmed intc globes and other fantastic shapes, and its 4 50 LEAMINGTON SPA. verdant hedge? shutting the house in from the common drive and dividing it from its equally cozy neighbors. Coming out of the door, and taking a turn round the circle of sister-dwellings, it is difficult to find your way Lack by any distinguishing individuality of your own habitation. In the centre of the Circus is a space fenced in with iron railing, a small play-place and sylvan retreat for the children of the precinct, permeated by brief paths through the fresh English grass, and shadowed by vari ous shrubbery ; amid which, if you like, you may fancy yourself in a deep seclusion, though probably the mark of eye-shot from the windows of all the surrounding houses. But, in truth, with regard to the rest of the town and the world at large, an abode here is a genuine seclusion ; for the ordinary stream of life does not run through this little, quiet pool, and few or none of the inhabitants seem to be troubled with any business or outside activities. I used to set them down as half-pay officers, dowagers of narrow income, elderly maiden ladies, and other people of re spectability, but small account, such as hang on the world's skirts rather than actually belong to it. The quiet of the place was seldom disturbed, except by the grocer and butcher, who came to receive orders, or by the cabs, hackney-coaches, and Bath-chairs, in which the ladies took an infrequent airing, or the livery-steed which the retired captain sometimes bestrode for a morning ride, or by the red-coated postman who went his rounds twice a day to deliver letters, and again in the evening, ringing a hand-bell, to take letters for the mail. In merely men tioning these slight interruptions of its sluggish stillness, I seem to myself to disturb too much the atmosphere of quiet that brooded over the spot ; whereas its impression LEAMINGTON SPA. 51 •ipon me was. that the world had never found the way hither, or had forgotten it, and that the fortunate inhab itants were the only ones who possessed the spell-word of admittance. Nothing could have suited me better, at the time ; for I had been holding a position of public ser vitude, which imposed upon me (among a great many lighter duties) the ponderous necessity of being univer sally civil and sociable. Nevertheless, if a man were seeking the bustle of society, he might find it more readily in Leamington than in most other English towns. It is a permanent water ing-place, a sort of institution to which I do not know any close parallel in American life : for such places as Sara toga bloom only for the summer season, and offer a thou sand dissimilitudes even then ; while Leamington seems to be always in flower, and serves as a home to the homeless all the year round. Its original nucleus, the plausible excuse for the town's coming into prosperous existence, lies' in the fiction of a chalybeate well, which, indeed, is so far a reality that out of its magical depths have gushed streets, groves, gardens, mansions, shops, and churches, and spread themselves along the banks of the little river Learn. This miracle accomplished, tho beneficent fountain has retired beneath a pump-room, and appears to have given up all pretensions to the remedial virtues formerly attributed to it. I know not whether its waters are ever tasted nowadays ; but not the less does Leamington — in pleasant Warwickshire, at the very midmost point of England, in a good hunting neighbor hood, and surrounded by country-seats and castles — con tinue to be a resort of transient visitors, and the mor<> permanent abode of a class of genteel, unoccupied 52 LEAMINGTON SPA. to-do, but not very wealthy people, such as are hardly known among ourselves. Persons who have no country- houses, and whose fortunes are inadequate to a Londor expenditure, find here, I suppose, a sort of town and country life in one. In its present aspect the town is of no great age. In contrast with the antiquity of many places in its neigh borhood, it has a bright, new face, and seems almost to smile even amid the sombreness of an English autumn. Nevertheless, it is hundreds upon hundreds of years old, if we reckon up that sleepy lapse of time during which it existed as a small village of thatched houses, clustered round a priory ; and it would still have been precisely such a rural village, but for a certain Doctor Jephson, who lived within the memory of man, and who found out the magic well, and foresaw what fairy wealth might be made to flow from it. A public garden has been laid out along the margin of the Learn, and called the Jephson Garden, in honor of him who created the prosperity of his native spot. A little way within the garden-gate there is a circular temple of Grecian architecture, be neath the dome of which stands a marble statue of the good Doctor, very well executed, and representing him with a face of fussy activity and benevolence : just the kind of man, if luck favored him, to build up the for tunes of those about him, or, quite as probably, to blight his whole neighborhood by some disastrous speculation. The Jephson Garden is very beautiful, like most other English pleasure-grounds ; for, aided by their moist cli mate and not too fervid sun, the landscape-gardeners excel in converting flat or tame surfaces into attractive scenery, chiefly through the skilful arrangement of treea LEAMINGTON SPA. 53 and shrubbery. An Englishman aims at this effect even in the little patches under the windows of a suburban villa, and achieves it on a larger scale in a tract of many acres. The Garden is shadowed with trees of a fine growth, standing alone, or in dusky groves and dense entanglements, pervaded by woodland paths ; and emerg ing from these pleasant glooms, we come upon a breadth of sunshine, where the green sward — so vividly green that it has a kind of lustre in it — is spotted with beds of gemlike flowers. Rustic chairs and benches are scat tered about, some of them ponderously fashioned out of the stumps of obtruncated trees, and others more artfully made with intertwining branches, or perhaps an imitation of such frail handiwork in iron. In a central part of the Garden is an archery-ground, where laughing maidens practise at the butts, generally missing their ostensible mark, but, by the mere grace of their action, sending an unseen shaft into some young man's heart. There is space, moreover, within these precincts, for an artificial lake, with a little green island in the midst of it ; both lake and island being the haunt of swans, whose aspect and movement in the water are most beautiful and stately, — most infirm, disjointed, and decrepit, when, unadvisedly, they see fit to emerge, and try to walk upon dry land. In the latter case, they look like a breed of uncommonly ill-contrived geese ; and I record the matter here for the sake of the moral, — that we should never pass judgment on the merits of any person or thing, unless we behold them in the sphere and circumstances to which they are specially adapted. In still another part of the Garden there is a labyrinthine maze, formed of an irtri- cacy of hedge-bordered walks, involving himself in which, 54 LEAMINGTON SPA. a man might wander for hours inextricably within a circuit of only a few yards. It seemed to me a sad emblem of the mental and moral perplexities in which we sometimes go astray, petty in scope, yet large enough to entangle a lifetime, and bewilder us with a weary movement, but no genuine progress. The Learn — the " high complectioned Learn," as Drayton calls it — after drowsing across the principal street of the town beneath a handsome bridge, skirts along the margin of the Garden without any perceptible flow. Heretofore I had fancied the Concord the laziest river in the world, but now assign that amiable distinc tion to the little English stream. Its water is by no means transparent, but has a greenish, goose-puddly hue, which, however, accords well with the other coloring and characteristics of the scene, and is disagreeable neither to sight nor smell. Certainly, this river is a perfect feature of that gentle picturesqueness in which England is so rich, sleeping, as it does, beneath a margin of willows that droop into its bosom, and other trees, of deeper ver dure than our own country can boast, inclining lovingly over it. On the Garden-side it is bordered by a shadowy, eecluded grove, with winding paths among its boskiness, affording many a peep at the river's imperceptible lapse and tranquil gleam ; and on the opposite shore stands the priory-church, with its churchyard full of shrubbery and tombstones. The business portion of the town clusters about the banks of the Learn, and is naturally densest around the well to which the modern settlement owes its existence. Here are the commercial inns, the post-office, the furni ture dealers, the ironmongers, and all the heavy and LEAMINGTON SPA. o5 homely establishments that connect themselves even with the airiest modes of human life ; while upward from the river, by a long and gentle ascent, rises the principal street, which is very bright and cheerful in its physiog nomy, and adorned with shop-fronts almost as splendid as those of London, though on a diminutive scale. There are likewise side-streets and cross-streets, many of which are bordered with the beautiful Warwickshire elm, a most unusual kind of adornment for an English town ; and spacious avenues, wide enough to afford room for stately groves, with foot-paths running beneath the lofty shade, and rooks cawing and chattering so high in the tree-tops that their voices get musical before reaching the earth. The houses are mostly built in blocks and ranges, in which every separate tenement is a repetition of its fellow, though the architecture of the different ranges is •sufficiently various. Some of them are almost palatial in size and sumptuousness of arrangement. Then, on the outskirts of the town, there are detached villas, en closed within that separate domain of high stone fence and embowered shrubbery which an Englishman so loves to build and plant around his abode, presenting to the public only an iron gate, with a gravelled carriage-drive winding away towards the half-hidden mansion. Wheth er in street or suburb, Leamington may fairly be called beautiful, and, at some points, magnificent ; but by and by you become doubtfully suspicious of a somewhat unreal finery : it is pretentious, though not glaringly so ; it has been built, with malice aforethought, as a place of gentil ity and enjoyment. Moreover, splendid as the houses look, and comfortable as they often are, there is a name- iess something about them, betokening that they have not 56 LEAMINGTON SPA. grown out of human hearts, but are the creations of a skilfully applied human intellect : no man has reared any one of them, whether stately or humble, to be his life- long residence, wherein to bring up his children, who are to inherit it as a home. They are nicely contrived lodging- houses, one and all, — the best as well as the shabbiest of them, — and therefore inevitably lack some nameless property that a home should have. This was the case with our own little snuggery in Lansdowne Circus, as with all the rest ; it had not grown out of anybody's in dividual need, but was built to let or sell, and was there fore like a ready-made garment, — a tolerable fit, but only tolerable. All these blocks, ranges, and detached villas are adorned with the finest and most aristocratic names that I have found anywhere in England, except, perhaps, in Bath, which is the great metropolis of that second-class gentility with which watering-places are chiefly popu lated. Lansdowne Crescent, Lansdowne Circus, Lans downe Terrace, Regent Street, Warwick Street, Claren don Street, the Upper and Lower Parade: such are a few of the designations. Parade, indeed, is a well-chosen name for the principal street, along which the population of the idle town draws itself out for daily review and dis play. I only wish that my descriptive powers would enable me to throw off a picture of the scene at a sunny noontide, individualizing each character with a touch : the great people alighting from their carriages at the principal shop-doors ; the elderly ladies and infirm Indian officers drawn along in Bath-chairs ; the comely, rather than pretty, English girls, with their deep, healthy bloom, which an American taste is apt to deem fitter for a milk- LEAMINGTON SPA. 57 moid than for a lady; the moustached gentlemen with frogged surtouts and a military air ; the nursemaids and chubby children, but no chubbier than our own, and scampering on slenderer legs ; the sturdy figure of John Bull in all varieties and of all ages, but ever with the stamp of authenticity somewhere about him. To say the truth, I have been holding the pen over my paper, purposing to write a descriptive paragraph or two about the throng on the principal Parade of Leamington, so arranging it as to present a sketch of the British out-of- door aspect on a morning walk of gentility ; but I find no personages quite sufficiently distinct and individual in my memory to supply the materials of such a panorama. Oddly enough, the only figure that comes fairly forth to my mind's eye is that of a dowager, one of hundreds whom I used to marvel at, all over England, but who have scarcely a representative among our own ladies of autumnal life, so thin, careworn, and frail, as age usually makes the latter. I have heard a good deal of the tenacity with which English ladies retain their personal beauty to a late period of life ; but (not to suggest that an American eye needs use and cultivation before it can quite appreciate the charm of English beauty at any age) it strikes me that an English lady of fifty is apt to become a creature less refined and delicate, so far as her physique goes, than anything that we Western people class under the name of woman. She has an awful ponderosity of frame, not pulpy, like the looser development of our few fat women, but massive with solid beef and streaky tallow ; so that (though struggling manfully against the idea) you inevitably think of her as made up of steaks and sirloins. 58 LEAMINGTON SPA. When she walks, her advance is elephantine. When she sits down it is on a great round space of her Maker's footstool, where she looks as if nothing could ever move her. She imposes awe and respect by the muchness of her personality, to such a degree that you probably credit her with far greater moral and intellectual force than she can fairly claim. Her visage is usually grim and stern, seldom positively forbidding, yet calmly terrible, not merely by its breadth and weight of feature, but because it seems to express so much well-founded self-reliance, such acquaintance with the world, its toils, troubles, and dan gers, and such sturdy capacity for trampling down a foe. Without anything positively salient, or actively offensive, or, indeed, unjustly formidable to her neighbors, she has the effect of a seventy-four gun-ship in time of peace ; for, while you assure yourself that there is no real dan ger, you cannot help thinking how tremendous would be her onset, if pugnaciously inclined, and how futile the effort to inflict any counter-injury. She certainly looks tenfold — nay, a hundred-fold — better able to take care of herself than our slender-framed and haggard womankind ; but I have not found reason to suppose that the English dowager of fifty has actually greater courage, fortitude, and strength of character than our women of similar age, or even a tougher physical endurance than they. Mor ally, she is strong, I suspect, only in society, and in the common routine of social affairs, and would be found powerless and timid in any exceptional strait that might call for energy outside of the conventionalities amid which she has grown up. You can meet this figure in the street, and live, and even smile at the recollection. But conceive of her in a LEAMINGTON SPA. 59 ball-room, with the bare, brawny arms that she invariably displays there, and all the other corresponding develop ment, such as is beautiful in the maiden blossom, but a spectacle to howl at in such an over-blown cabbage-roso as this. Yet, somewhere in this enormous bulk there must be hidden the modest, slender, violet-nature of a girl, whom an alien mass of earthliness has unkindly overgrown ; for an English maiden in her teens, though very seldom so pretty as our own damsels, possesses, to say the truth, a certain charm of half-blossom, and delicately folded leaves, and tender womanhood shielded by maidenly reserves, with which, somehow or other, our American girls often fail to adorn themselves during an appreciable moment. It is a pity that the English violet should grow into such an outrageously developed peony as I have attempted to describe. I wonder whether a middle-aged husband ought to be considered as legally married to all the accretions that have overgrown the slenderness of his bride, since he led her to the altar, and which make her so much more than he ever bargained for ! Is it not a sounder view of the case, that the matrimonial bond can not be held to include the three fourths of the wife that had no existence when the ceremony was performed? And as a matter of conscience and good morals, ought not an English married pair to insist upon the celebra tion of a Silver Wedding at the end of twenty-five years in order to legalize and mutually appropriate that cor poreal growth of which both parties have individually come into possession since they were pronounced one flesh? The chief enjoyment of my several visits to Learning- 60 LEAMINGTON SPA. ton lay in rural walks about the neighborhood, and in jaunts to places of note and interest, which are particu larly abundant in that region. The high-roads are made pleasant to the traveller by a border of trees, and often afford him the hospitality of a wayside bench beneath a comfortable shade. But a fresher delight is to be found in the foot-paths, \\hich go wandering away from style to style, along hedges, and across broad fields, and through wooded parks, leading you to little hamlets of thatched cottages, ancient, solitary farm-houses, picturesque old mills, streamlets, pools, and all those quiet, secret, unex pected, yet strangely familiar features of English scenery that Tennyson shows us in his idyls and eclogues. These bypaths admit the wayfarer into the very heart of rural life, and yet do not burden him with a sense of intrusive- ness. He has a right to go whithersoever they lead him ; for, with all their shaded privacy, they are as much the property of the public as the dusty high-road itself, and even by an older tenure. Their antiquity probably ex ceeds that of the Roman ways; the footsteps of the aboriginal Britons first wore away the grass, and the natural flow of intercourse between village and village has kept the track bare ever since. An American farmer would plough across any such path, and obliter ate it with his hills of potatoes and Indian corn ; but here it is protected by law, and still more by the sacred ness that inevitably springs up, in this soil, along th well-defined footprints of centuries. Old associations are sure to be fragrant herbs in English nostrils : we pull them up as weeds. I remember such a path, the access to which i* from Lovers' Grove, a range of tall old oaks and elm» or u LEAMINGTON SPA. 61 high hill-top, whence there is a view of "Warwick Castle, and a wide extent of landscape, beautiful, though be- dimmed with English mist. This particular foot-path, however, is not a remarkably good specimen of its kind, since it leads into no hollows and seclusions, and soon terminates in a high road. It connects Leamington by a short cut with the small neighboring village of Lillington, a place which impresses an American observer with its many points of contrast to the rural aspects of his own country. The village consists chiefly of one row of con tiguous dwellings, separated only by party-walls, but ill- matched among themselves, being of different heights, and apparently of various ages, though all are of an an tiquity which we should call venerable. Some of the windows are leaden-framed lattices, opening on hinges. These houses are mostly built of gray stone ; but others, in the same range, are of brick, and one or two are in a very old fashion, — Elizabethan, or still older, — having a ponderous framework of oak, painted black, and filled in with plastered stone or bricks. Judging by the patches of repair, the oak seems to be the more durable part of the structure. Some of the roofs are covered with earth- ern tiles ; others (more decayed and poverty-stricken) with thatch, out of which sprouts a luxurious vegetation of grass, house-leeks, and yellow flowers. What es pecially strikes an American is the lack of that insulated space, the intervening gardens, grass-plots, orchards broad-spreading shade-trees, which occur between our own village-houses. These English dwellings have no such separate surroundings ; they all grow together, like the cells of a honey-comb. Beyond the first row of houses, and hidden from it by 62 LEAMINGTON SPA. a turn of the road, there was another row (or block, as we should call it) of small old cottages, stuck one against another, with their thatched roofs forming a single con tiguity. These, I presume, were the habitations of the poorest order of rustic laborers ; and the narrow precincts of each cottage, as well as the close neighborhood of the whole, gave the impression of a stifled, unhealthy atmos phere among the occupants. It seemed impossible that there should be a cleanly reserve, a proper self-respect among individuals, or a wholesome unfamiliarity between families, where human life was crowded and massed into such intimate communities as these. Nevertheless, not to look beyond the outside, I never saw a prettier rural scene than was presented by this range of contiguous huts. For in front of the whole row was a luxuriant and well-trimmed hawthorn hedge, and belonging to each cottage was a little square of garden-ground, separated from its neighbors by a line of the same verdant fence. The gardens were chockfull, not of esculent vegetables, but of flowers, familiar ones, but very bright-colored, and shrubs of box, some of which were trimmed into artistic shapes ; and I remember, before one door, a representa tion of Warwick Castle, made of oyster-shells. The cottagers evidently loved the little nests in which they dwelt, and did their best to make them beautiful, and succeeded more than tolerably well, — so kindly did Nature help their humble efforts with its verdure, flow ers, moss, lichens, and the green things that grew out of the thatch. Through some of the open doorways wo saw plump children rolling about on the stone floors, and th^ir mothers, by no means very pretty, but as happy- looking as mothers generally are ; and while we gazed at LEAMINGTON SPA. 6,1 these domestic matters, an old woman rushed wildly out of one of the gates, upholding a shovel, on which she clanged and clattered with a key. At first we fancied that she intended an onslaught against ourselves, but soon discovered that a more dangerous enemy was abroad ; for the old lady's bees had swarmed, and the air was full of them, whizzing by our heads like bullets. Not far from these two rows of houses and cottages, a green lane, overshadowed with trees, turned aside from the main road, and tended towards a square, gray tower, the battlements of which were just high enough to be visible above the foliage. Wending our way thitherward, we found the very picture and ideal of a country church and churchyard. The tower seemed to be of Norman architecture, low, massive, and crowned with battlements. The body of the church was of very modest dimensions, and the eaves so low that I could touch them with my walking-stick. We looked into the windows and beheld the dim and quiet interior, a narrow space, but venerable with the consecration of many centuries, and keeping its sanctity as entire and inviolate as that of a vast cathedral. The nave was divided from the side aisles of the church by pointed arches resting on very sturdy pillars : it was good to see how solemnly they held themselves to their age-long task of supporting that lowly roof. There was a small organ, suited in size to the vaulted hollow, which it weekly filled with religious sound. On the opposite wall of the church, between two windows, was a mural tablet of white marble, with an inscription in black let ters, — the only such memorial that I could discern, although many dead people doubtless lay beneath the floor, and had paved it with their ancient tombstones, aa 64 LEAMINGTON SPA. is customary in old English churches. There were no modern painted windows, flaring with raw colors, nor other gorgeous adornments, such as the present taste for mediaeval restoration often patches upon the decorous simplicity of the gray village-church. It is probably the worshipping-place of no more distinguished a congrega tion than the farmers and peasantry who inhabit the houses and cottages which I have just described. Had the lord of the manor been one of the parishioners, there would have been an eminent pew near the chancel, walled high about, curtained, and softly cushioned," warmed by a fireplace of its own, and distinguished by hereditary tab lets and escutcheons on the enclosed stone pillar. A well-trodden path led across the churchyard, and the gate being on the latch, we entered, and walked round among the graves and monuments. The latter were chiefly head-stones, none of which were very old, so far as was discoverable by the dates; some, indeed, in so ancient a cemetery, were disagreeably new, with inscrip tions glittering like sunshine, in gold letters. The ground must have been dug over and over again, innumerable times, until the soil is made up of what was once human clay, out of which have sprung successive crops of grave stones, that flourish their allotted time, and disappear, like the weeds and flowers in their briefer period. The English climate is very unfavorable to the endurance of memorials in the open air. Twenty years of it suffice to give as much antiquity of aspect, whether to tombstone or edifice, as a hundred years of our own drier atmos phere, — so soon do the drizzly rains and constant mois ture corrode the surface of marble or freestone. Sculp tured edges lose their sharpness in a year or two ; yellow LEAMINGTON SPA. 65 lichens overspread a beloved name, and obliterate it while it is yet fresh upon some survivor's heart. Time gnaws an English gravestone with wonderful appetite ; and when the inscription is quite illegible, the sexton takes the useless slab away, and perhaps makes a hearthstone of it, and digs up the unripe bones which it ineffectually tried to memorialize, and gives the bed to another sleeper. In the Charter-Street burial-ground at Salem, and in the old graveyard on the hill at Ipswich, I have seen more ancient gravestones, with legible inscriptions on them, than in any English churchyard. And yet this same ungenial climate, hostile as it gen erally is to the long remembrance of departed people, has sometimes a lovely way of dealing with the records on certain monuments that lie horizontally in the open air. The rain falls into the deep incisions of the letters, and has scarcely time to be dried away before another shower sprinkles the flat stone again, and replenishes those little reservoirs. The unseen, mysterious seeds of mosses find their way into the lettered furrows, and are made to ger minate by the continual moisture and watery sunshine of the English sky ; and by and by, in a year, or two years, or many years, behold the complete inscription — Usetij tlje and all the rest of the tender falsehood — beautifully embossed in raised letters of living green, a bas-relief of velvet moss on the marble slab ! It becomes more legible, under the skyey influences, after the world has forgotten the deceased, than when it was fresh from the Bt one-cutter's hands. It outlives the grief of friends. T first saw an example of this in Bebbington church- 66 LEAMINGTON SPA. yard, in Cheshire, and thought that Nature must needs have had a special tenderness for the person (no noted man, however, in the world's history) so long ago laid beneath that stone, since she took such wonderful pains to " keep his memory green." Perhaps the proverbial phrase just quoted may have had its origin in the natural phenomenon here described. While we rested ourselves on a horizontal monument, which was elevated just high enough to be a convenient seat, I observed that one of the gravestones lay very close to the church, — so close that the droppings of the eaves would fall upon it. It seemed as if the inmate of that grave had desired to creep under the church-wall. On closer inspection, we found an almost illegible epitaph on the stone, and with difficulty made out this forlorn verse : — " Poorly lived, And poorly died, Poorly buried, And no one cried." It would be hard to compress the story of a cold and luckless life, death, and burial into fewer words, or more impressive ones ; at least, we found them impressive, per haps because we had to re-create the inscription by scraping away the lichens from the faintly traced letters. The grave was on the shady and damp side of the church, endwise towards it, the head-stone being within about three feet of the foundation-wall ; so that, unless the poor innn was a dwarf, he must have been doubled up to fit him into his final resting-place. No wonder that his epitaph murmured against so poor a burial as this ! His name, as well as I could make it out, was Treeo, — Joh» LEAMINGTON SPA. C7 Treeo, I think, — and he died in 1810, at the age of sev enty-four. The gravestone is so overgrown with grass and weeds, so covered with unsightly lichens, and so crumbly with time and foul weather, that it is question able whether anybody will ever be at the trouble of de ciphering it again. But there is a quaint and sad kind of enjoyment in defeating (to such slight degree as mj pen may do it) the probabilities of oblivion for poor John Treeo, and asking a little sympathy for him, half a cen tury after his death, and making him better and more widely known, at least, than any other slumberer in Lil- lington churchyard : he having been, as appearances go, the outcast of them all. You find similar old churches and villages in all the neighboring country, at the distance of every two or three miles ; and I describe them, not as being rare, but be cause they are so common and characteristic. The vil lage of Whitnash, within twenty minutes' walk of Leam ington, looks as secluded, as rural, and as little disturbed by the fashions of to-day, as if Dr. Jephson had never developed all those Parades and Crescents out of his magic well. I used to wonder whether the inhabitants had ever yet heard of railways, or, at their slow rate of progress, had even reached the epoch of stage-coaches. As you approach the village, while it is yet unseen, you observe a tall, overshadowing canopy of elm-tree tops, beneath which you almost hesitate to follow the public road, on account of the remoteness that seems to exist between the precincts of this old-world community and the thronged modern street out of which you have so recently emerged. Venturing onward, however, you soon find yourself in the heart of Whitnash, and see 68 LEAMINGTON SPA. an Irregular ring of ancient rustic dwellings surrounding the village-green, on one side of which stands the church, with its square Norman tower and battlements, while close adjoining is the vicarage, made picturesque by peaks and gables. At first glimpse, none of the houses appear to be less than two or three centuries old, and they are of the ancient, wooden-framed fashion, with thatched roofs, which give them the air of birds' nests, thereby assimilating them closely to the simplicity of Nature. The church-tower is mossy and much gnawed by time ; it has narrow loopholes up and down its front and sides, and an arched window over the low portal, set with small panes of glass, cracked, dim, and irregular, through which a bygone age is peeping out into the daylight. Some of those old, grotesque faces, called gargoyles, are seen on the projections of the architecture. The churchyard is very small, and is encompassed by a gray stone fence that looks as ancient as the church itself. In front of the tower, on the village-green, is a yew-tree of incalculable age, with a vast circumference of trunk, but a very scanty head of foliage ; though its boughs still keep some of the vitality which perhaps \vas in its early prime when the Saxon invaders founded Whitnash. A thousand years is no extraordinary antiquity in the lifetime of a yew. Wo were pleasantly startled, however, by discovering an exuberance of more youthful life than we had thought possible in so old a tree ; for the faces of two children laughed at us out of an opening in the trunk, which had become hollow with long decay. On one side of the yew stood a framework of worm-eaten timber, the use and meaning of which puzzled me exceedingly, till I LEAMINGTON SPA. 69 made it out to be the village-stocks : a public institution that, in its day, had doubtless hampered many a pair of shank-bones, now crumbling in the adjacent churchyard. It is not to be supposed, however, that this old-fashioned mode of punishment is still in vogue among the good people of Whitnash. The vicar of the parish has anti quarian propensities, and had probably dragged the stocks out of some dusty hiding-place, and set them up on their former site as a curiosity. I disquiet myself in vain with the effort to hit upon some characteristic feature, or assemblage of features, that shall convey to the reader the influence of hoar antiquity lingering into the present daylight, as I so often felt it in these old English scenes. It is only an American who can feel it ; and even he begins to find himself growing insensible to its effect, after a long residence in England. But while you are still new in the old country, it thrills you with strange emotion to think that this little church of Whitnash, humble as it seems, stood for ages under the Catholic faith, and has not materially changed since Wick- cliffe's days, and that it looked as gray as now in Bloody Mary's time, and that Cromwell's troopers broke off the stone noses of those same gargoyles that are now grinning in your face. So, too, with the immemorial yew-tree : you Bee its great roots grasping hold of the earth like gigantic claws, clinging so sturdily that no effort of time can wrench them away ; and there being life in the old tree, you feel all the more as if a contemporary witness were telling you of the things that have been. It has lived among men, and been a familiar object to them, and seen them brought to be christened and married and buried in the neighboring church and churchyard, through so many 70 LEAMINGTON SPA. centuries, that it knows all about our race, so far as fifty generations of the Whitnash people can supply such knowledge. And, after all, what a weary life it must have been for the old tree ! Tedious beyond imagination ! Such, I think, is the final impression on the mind of an American visitor, when his delight at finding something permanent begins to yield to his Western love of change, and he becomes sensible of the heavy air of a spot where the forefathers and foremothers have grown up together, intermarried, and died, through a long succession of lives, without any intermixture of new elements, till family features and character are all run in the same inevitable mould. Life is there fossilized in its greenest leaf. The man who died yesterday or ever so long ago walks the village-street to-day, and chooses the same wife that he married a hundred years since, and must be buried again to-morrow under the same kindred dust that has already covered him half a score of times. The stone threshold of his cottage is worn away with his hob-nailed footsteps, shuffling over it from the reign of the first Plantagenet to that of Victoria. Better than this is the lot of our rest less countrymen, whose modern instinct bids them tend always towards " fresh woods and pastures new." Rather than such monotony of sluggish ages, loitering on a vil lage-green, toiling in hereditary fields, listening to the parson's drone lengthened through centuries in the gray Norman church, let us welcome whatever change may come, — change of place, social customs, political institu tions, modes of worship, — trusting, that, if all present things shall vanish, they will but make room for better systems, and for a higher type of man to clothe his life in them, and to fling them off in turn. LEAMINGTON SPA. 71 Nevertheless, while an American willingly accepts growth and change as the *aw of his own national and private existence, he has ? singular tenderness for the stone-incrusted institutions of the mother-country. The reason may be (though I should pre er a more generous explanation) that he recognires the tendency of these hardened forms to stiffen her joints and fetter her ankles, in the race and rivalry of improvement. I hated to see so much as a twig of ivy wr^n^hed away from an old wall in England. Yet change if at work, even in such a village as Whitnash. At a subsequent visit, looking more critically at the irregular circle of dwellings that surround the yew-tree and confront the church, I perceived that some of the houses must have beer built within no long time, although the thatch, the quaixit gables, and the old oaken framework of the others diffused an air of antiquity over the whole assemblage. The church itself was un dergoing repair and restoration, which is but another name for change. Masons were making patch-work on the front of the tower, and were saw?ng a slab of stone and piling up bricks to strengthen the side-wall, or pos sibly to enlarge the ancient edifice by an additional aisle. Moreover, they had dug an immense pit in the church yard, long and broad, and fifteen feet de^p, two thirds of which profundity were discolored by human decay, and mixed up with crumbly bones. What tbb excavation was intended for I could nowise imagine, unless it were the very pit in which Longfellow bids the " Dead Past bury its Dead," and Whitnash, of all places i*\ the world, were going to avail itself of our poet's suggestion. If so, it must needs be confessed that many pictu**€s^ue and delightful things would be thrown into the hole- r-i.J covered out of sight forever. 72 LEAMINGTON SPA. The article which I am writing has taker, its own course, and occupied itself almost wholly with country churches ; whereas I had purposed to attempt a descrip tion of some of the many old towns — "Warwick, Coven try, Kenil worth, Stratford-on-Avon — which lie within an easy scope of Leamington. And still another church presents itself to my remembrance. It is that of Hatton, on which I stumbled in the course of a forenoon's ramble, and paused a little while to look at it for the sake of old Dr. Parr, who was once its vicar. Hatton, so far as I could discover, has no public-house, no shop, no con tiguity of roofs, (as in most English villages, however small,) but is merely an ancient neighborhood of farm houses, spacious, and standing wide apart, each within its own precincts, and offering a most comfortable aspect of orchards, harvest-fields, barns, stacks, and all manner of rural plenty. It seemed to be a community of old set tlers, among whom everything had been going on prosper ously since an epoch beyond the memory of man ; and they kept a certain privacy among themselves, and dwelt on a cross-road at the entrance of which was a barred- gate, hospitably open, but still impressing me with a sense of scarcely warrantable intrusion. After all, in some shady nook of those gentle Warwickshire slopes there may have been a denser and more populous settlement, styled Hatton, which I never reached. Emerging from the by-road, and entering upon one that crossed it at right angles and led to Warwick, I espied the church of Dr. Parr. Like the others which I have described, it had a low stone tower, square, and buttlemented at its summit : for all these little churches seem to have been built on the same model, and nearly LEAMINGTON SPA. 73 at the same measurement, and have even a greater family-likeness than the cathedrals. As I approached, the bell of the tower (a remarkably deep-toned bell, con sidering how small it was) flung its voice abroad, and told me that it was noon. The church stands among its graves, a little removed from the wayside, quite apart from any collection of houses, and with no signs of a vicarage ; it is a good deal shadowed by trees, and not wholly desti tute of ivy. The body of the edifice, unfortunately, (and it is an outrage which the English churchwardens are fond of perpetrating,) has been newly covered with a yellowish plaster or wash, so as quite to destroy the aspect of antiquity, except upon the tower, which wears the dark gray hue of many centuries. The chancel-win dow is painted with a representation of Christ upon the Cross, and all the other windows are full of painted or stained glass, but none of it ancient, nor (if it be fair to judge from without of what ought to be seen within) possessing any of the tender glory that should be the inheritance of this branch of Art, revived from med iaeval times. I stepped over the graves, and peeped in at two or three of the windows, and saw the snug interior of the church glimmering through the many- colored panes, like a show of commonplace objects under the fantastic influence of a dream : for the floor was covered with modern pews, very like what we may see in a New England meeting-house, though, I think, a little more favorable than those would be to the quiet slumbers of the Hatton farmers and their families. Those who slept under Dr. Parr's preaching now prolong their nap, I suppose, in the churchyard round about, and caii scarcely have drawn much spiritual benefit from any 74 LEAMINGTON SI A. truths that lie contrived to tell them in their lifetime. It struck me as a rare example (even where examples are numerous) of a man utterly misplaced, that this enormouft scholar, great in the classic tongues, and inevitably con verting his own simplest vernacular into a learned Ian guage, should have been set up in this homely pulpit, and ordained to preach salvation to a rustic audience, to whom it is difficult to imagine how he could ever have Bpoken one available word. Almost always, in visiting such scenes as I have been attempting to describe, I had a singular sense of having been there before. The ivy-grown English churches (even that of Bebbington, the first that I beheld) were quite as familiar to me, when fresh from home, as the old wooden meeting-house in Salem, which used, on wintry sabbaths, to be the frozen purgatory of my child hood. Tliis was a bewildering, yet very delightful emo tion, fluttering about me like a faint summer-wind, and filling my imagination with & thousand half-remembran ces, which looked as vivid as sunshine, at a side-glance, but faded quite away whenever I attempted to grasp and define them. Of course, the explanation of the mystery was, that history, poetry, and fiction, books of travel, and the talk of tourists, had given me pretty accurate precon ceptions of the common objects of English scenery, and these, being long ago vivified by a youthful fancy, had insensibly taken their places among the images of things actually seen. Yet the illusion was often so powerful, that I almost doubted whether such airy remembrances might not be a sort of innate idea, the print of a recollec tion in some ancestral mind, transmitted, with fainter and fainter impress through several descents, to my own. I LEAMINGTON SPA. 75 felt, indeed, like the stalwart progenitor in person, return ing to the hereditary haunts after more than two hundred years, and finding the church, the hall, the farm-house, the cottage, hardly changed during his long absence, — • the same shady by-paths and hedge-lanes, the same veiled sky, and green lustre of the lawns and fields, — while his own affinities for these things, a little obscured by disuse, were reviving at every step. An American is not very apt to love the English peo ple, as a whole, on whatever length of acquaintance. I fancy that they would value our regard, and even recip rocate it in their ungracious way, if we could give it to them in spite of all rebuffs ; but they are beset by a curi ous and inevitable infelicity, which compels them, as it were, to keep up what they seem to consider a whole some bitterness of feeling between themselves and all other nationalities, especially that of America, They will never confess it; nevertheless, it is as essential a tonic to them as their bitter ale. Therefore — and pos sibly, too, from a similar narrowness in his own character — an American seldom feels quite as if he were at home among the English people. If he do so, he has ceased to be an American. But it requires no long residence to make him love their island, and appreciate it as thor oughly as they themselves do. For my part, I used to wish that we could annex it, transferring their thirty millions of inhabitants to some convenient wilderness in the great West, and putting half or a quarter as many of ourselves into their places. The change would be bene ficial to both parties. We, in our dry atmosphere, are petting too nervous, haggard, dyspeptic, extenuated, un substantial, theoretic, and need to be made grosser. John 70 LEAMINGTON SPA. Bull, on the other hand, has grown bulbous, long-bodied, short-legged, heavy-witted, material, and, in a word, too intensely English. In a few more centuries he will be the earthliest creature that ever the earth saw. Hereto fore Providence has obviated such a result by timely intermixtures of alien races with the old English stock ; so that each successive conquest of England has proved a victory by the revivification and improvement of its native nanhood. Cannot America and England hit upon some ^cheme to secure even greater advantages to both nations ? ABOUT WARWICK. BETWEEN bright, new Leamington, the growth of the present century, and rusty Warwick, founded by King Cymbeline in the twilight ages, a thousand years before the mediaeval darkness, there are two roads, either of which may be measured by a sober-paced pedestrian in less than half an hour. One of these avenues flows out of the midst of the smart parades and crescents of the former town, — along by hedges and beneath the shadow of great elms, past stuccoed Elizabethan villas and way-side ale-houses, and through a hamlet of modern aspect, — and runs straight into the principal thoroughfare of Warwick. The battle- mented turrets of the castle, embowered half-way up in foliage, and the tall, slender tower of St. Mary's Church, rising from among clustered roofs, have been visible almost from the commencement of the walk. Near the entrance of the town stands St. John's School-House, a picturesque old edifice of stone, with four peaked gables in a row, alternately plain and ornamented, and wide, projecting windows, and a spacious and venerable porch, all overgrown with moss and ivy, and shut in from the world by a high stone fence, not less mossy than the gabled front. There is an iron gate, through the rusty }pen-work of which you see a grassy lawn, and almost 78 ABOUT WARWICK. expect to meet the shy, curious eyes of the little boys of ~»ast generations, peeping forth from their infantile an tiquity into the strangeness of our present life. I find a peculiar charm in these long-established English schools, where the school-boy of to-day sits side by side, as it were, with his great-grandsire, on the same old benches, and often, I believe, thumbs a later, but unimproved edi tion of the same old grammar or arithmetic. The new fangled notions of a Yankee Bchool-committee would madden many a pedagogue, and shake down the roof of many a time-honored seat of learning, in the mother. country. At this point, however, we will turn back, in order to "ollow up the other road from Leamington, which was the )ne that I loved best to take. It pursues a straight and evel course, bordered by wide gravel- walks and overhung )y the frequent elm, with here a cottage and there a villa, >n one side a wooded plantation, and on the other a rich field of grass or grain, until, turning at right angles, it brings you to an arched bridge over the Avon. Its para pet is a balustrade carved out of freestone, into the soft substance of which a multitude of persons have engraved their names or initials, many of them now illegible, while others, more deeply cut, are illuminated with fresh green moss. These tokens indicate a famous spot ; and casting our eyes along the smooth gleam and shadow of the quiet stream, through a vista of willows that droop on eithei "side into the water, we behold the gray magnificence of Warwick Castle, uplifting itself among stately trees, and rearing its turrets high above their loftiest branches. We can scarcely think the scene real, so completely do those machicolated towers, the long line of battlements, the ABOUT WARWICK. 79 massive buttresses, the high-windowed walls, shape out our indistinct ideas of the antique time. It might rather seem as if the sleepy river (being Shakspeare's Avon, and often, no doubt, the mirror of his gorgeous visions) were dreaming now of a lordly residence that stood hue many centuries ago ; and this fantasy is strengthened, when you observe that the image in the tranquil water lias all the distinctness of the actual structure. Either might be the reflection of the other. Wherever Time has gnawed one of the stones, you see the mark of his tooth just as plainly in the sunken reflection. Each is so perfect, that the upper vision seems a castle in the air, and the lower one an old stronghold of feudalism, mirac ulously kept from decay in an enchanted river. A ruinous and ivy-grown bridge, that projects from the bank a little on the hither side of the castle, has the effect of making the scene appear more entirely apart from the every-day world, for it ends abruptly in the middle of the stream, — so that, if a cavalcade of the knights and ladies of romance should issue from the old walls, they could never tread on earthly ground, any more than we, ap proaching from the side of modern realism, can overleap the gulf between our domain and theirs. Yet, if we seek to disenchant ourselves, it may readily be done. Crossing the bridge on which we stand, and passing a Ht'le farther on, we come to the entrance of the castle, abutting on the highway, and hospitably open at certain .ours to all curious pilgrims who choose to disbuise half n crown or so toward the support of the earl's domestics. The sight of that long series of historic rooms, full of such splendors and rarities as a great English family neces sarily gathers about itself, in its hereditary abode, and in 80 ABOUT WARWICK. the lapse of ages, is well worth the money, or ten tines as much, if indeed the value of the spectacle could be reckoned in money's-worth. But after the attendant has hurried you from end to end of the edifice, repeating a guide-book by rote, and exorcising each successive hall of its poetic glamor and witchcraft by the mere tone in which he talks about it, you will make the doleful discov ery that Warwick Castle has ceased to be a dream. It is better, methinks, to linger on the bridge, gazing at Caesar's Tower and Guy's Tower in the dim English sunshine above, and in the placid Avon below, and still keep them as thoughts in your own mind, than climb to their summits, or touch even a stone of their actual sub stance. They will have all the more reality for you, aa stalwart relics of immemorial time, if you are reverent enough to leave them in the intangible sanctity of a poetic vision. From the bridge over the Avon, the road passes in front of the castle-gate, and soon enters the principal street of Warwick, a little beyond St. John's School- House, already described. Chester itself, most antique of English towns, can hardly show quainter architectural shapes than many of the buildings that border this street. They are mostly of the timber-and-plaster kind, with bowed and decrepit ridge-poles, and a whole chronology of various patchwork in their walls; their low-browed door-ways open upon a sunken floor; their projecting stories peep, as it were, over one another's shoulders, and rise into a multiplicity of peaked gables ; they have curi ous windows, breaking out irregularly all over the house, some even in the roof, set in their own little peaks, open ing lattice-wise, and furnished with twenty small panes ABOUT WARWICK. 8'. or lozenge-shaped glass. The architecture of these edi fices (a visible oaken framework, showing the whoh skeleton of the house, — as if a man's bones should bw arranged on his outside, and his flesh seen through the interstices) is often imitated by modern builders, and with sufficiently picturesque effect. The objection is, that such houses, like all imitations of by-gone styles, have an air o£ affectation ; they do not seem to be built in earnest ; they are no better than playthings, or over grown baby-houses, in which nobody should be expected to encounter the serious realities of either birth or death. Besides, originating nothing, we leave no fashions for another age to copy, when we ourselves shall have grown antique. Old as it looks, all this portion of Warwick has over brimmed, as it were, from the original settlement, being outside of the ancient wall. The street soon runs under an arched gateway, with a church or some other vener able structure above it, and admits us into the heart of the town. At one of my first visits, I witnessed a mili tary display. A regiment of Warwickshire militia, prob ably commanded by the Earl, was going through its drill in the market-place ; and on the collar of one of the officers was embroidered the Bear and Ragged Staff, which has been the cognizance of the Warwick earldom from time immemorial. The soldiers were sturdy young men, with the simple, stolid, yet kindly, faces of English rustics, looking exceedingly well in a body, but slouching into a yeoman-like carriage and appearance, the moment they were dismissed from drill. Squads of them weri, distributed everywhere about the streets, and sentinels were posted at various points ; and I saw a sergeant, 82 ABOUT WARWICK. with a great key in his hand, (big enough tc have the key of the castle's main entrance when the gate was thickest and heaviest,) apparently setting a guard. Thus, centuries after feudal times are past, we find warriors still gathering under the old castle-walls, and commanded by a feudal lord, just as in the days of the King-Maker, who, no doubt, often mustered his retainers in the same market-place where I beheld this modern regiment. The interior of the town wears a less old-fashioned aspect than the suburbs through which we approach it ; and the High Street has shops with modern plate-glass, and buildings with stuccoed fronts, exhibiting as few pro jections to hang a thought or sentiment upon as if an architect of to-day had planned them. And, indeed, so far as their surface goes, they are perhaps new enough to stand unabashed in an American street ; but behind these renovated faces, with their monotonous lack of ex pression, there is probably the substance of the same old town that wore a Gothic exterior in the Middle Ages. The street is an emblem of England itself. What seems new in it is chiefly a skilful and fortunate adaptation of what such a people as ourselves would destroy. The new things are based and supported on sturdy old things, and derive a massive strength from their deep and im memorial foundations, though with such limitations and impediments as only an Englishman could endure. But he likes to feel the weight of all the past upon his back ; and, moreover, the antiquity that overburdens him has taken root in his being, and has grown to be rather a hump than a pack, so that there is no getting rid of it without tearing his whole structure to pieces. In my judgment, as he appears to be sufficiently comfortable ABOUT WARWICK. 83 ander the mouldy accretion, he had bettor stumble on with it as long as he can. He presents a spectacle which is by no means without its charm for a disinter ested and unincumbered observer. When the old edifice, or the antiquated custom or in stitution, appears in its pristine form, without any attempt at intermarrying it with modern fashions, an American cannot but admire the picturesque effect produced by the sudden cropping up of an apparently dead-and-buried state of society into the actual present, of which he is liimself a part. We need not go far in Warwick without encountering an instance of the kind. Proceeding west ward through the town, we find ourselves confronted by a huge mass of natural rock, hewn into something like arcliitectural shape, and penetrated by a vaulted passage, which may well have been one of King Cymbeline's original gateways ; and on the top of the rock, over the archway, sits a small, old church, communicating with an ancient edifice, or assemblage of edifices, that look down from a similar elevation on the side of the street. A range of trees half hides the latter establishment from the sun. It presents a curious and venerable speci men of the timber-and-plaster style of building, in which some of the finest old houses in England are constructed; the front projects into porticos and vesti bules, and rises into many gables, some in a row, and others crowning semi-detached portions of the struc ture ; the windows mostly open on hinges, but show a delightful irregularity of shape and position ; a multi plicity of chimneys break through the roof at their own will, or, at least, without any settled purpose of the archr tect. The whole affair looks very old, — FO old. indeed 81 ABOUT WARWICK. that the front bulges forth, as if the timber framework were a little weary, at last, of standing erect so long ; but the state of repair is so perfect, and there is such an indescribable aspect of continuous vitality within the sys tem of this aged house, that you feel confident that there may be safe shelter yet, and perhaps for centuries to come, under its time-honored roof. And on a bench, sluggishly enjoying the sunshine, and looking into the street of Warwick as from a life apart, a few old men are generally to be seen, wrapped in long cloaks, on which you may detect the glistening of a silver badge represent ing the Bear and Ragged Staff. These decorated worthies are some of the twelve brethren of Leicester's Hospital, — a community which subsists to-day under the identical modes that were established for it in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and of course retains many features of a social life that has vanished almost everywhere else. The edifice itself dates from a much older period than the charitable institution of which it is now the home. It was the seat of a religious fraternity far back in the Middle Ages, and continued so till Henry VIII. turned all the priesthood of England out-of-doors, and put the most unscrupulous of his favorites into their vacant abodes. In many instances, the old monks had chosen the sites of their domiciles so well, and built them on such a broad system of beauty and convenience, that their lay-occupants found it easy to convert them into stately and comfortable homes ; and as such they still exist, with something of the antique reverence lingering about them. The structure now before us seems to have been first granted to Sir Nicholas Lestrange, who per haps intended, like other men. to establish his household ABOUT WARWICK. &* gods m the niches whence he had thrown down the im ages of saints, and to lay his hearth where an altar had stood. But there was probably a natural reluctance in those days (when Catholicism, so lately repudiated, must needs have retained an influence over all but the most obdurate characters) to bring one's hopes of domestic >rosperity and a fortunate lineage into direct hostility with the awful claims of the ancient religion. At all events, there is still a superstitious idea, betwixt a fantasy and a belief, that the possession of former Church-prop erty has drawn a curse along with it, not only among the posterity of those to whom it was originally granted, but wherever it has subsequently been transferred, even if honestly bought and paid for. There are families, now inhabiting some of the beautiful old abbeys, who appear to indulge a species of pride in recording the strange deaths and ugly shapes of misfortune that have occurred among their predecessors, and may be supposed likely to dog their own pathway down the ages of futurity. Whether Sir Nicholas Lestrange, in the beef-eating days of Old Harry and Elizabeth, was a nervous man, and subject to apprehensions of this kind, I cannoi tell ; but it is certain that he speedily rid himself of the spoils of the Church, and that, within twenty years afterwards, the edifice became the property of the famous Dudley, Earl of Leicester, brother of the Earl of Warwick. He devoted the ancient religious precinct to a charitable use, endowing it with an ample revenue, and making it the perpetual home of twelve poor, honest, and war-broken soldiers, mostly his own retainers, and natives either of Warwickshire or Gloucestershire. These veterans, or others wonderfully like them, still occupy their monkish 8G ABOUT WARWICK. dormitories and haunt the time-darkened corridors and galleries of the hospital, leading a life of old-fashioned comfort, wearing the old-fashioned cloaks, and burnishing the identical silver badges which the Earl of Leicester ga\ e to the original twelve. He is said to have been a bad man in his day; but he has succeeded in prolonging one good deed into what was to him a distant future. On the projecting story, over the arched entrance, there is the date, 1571, and several coats-of-arms, either the Earl's or those of his kindred, and immediately above the ioor-way a stone sculpture of the Bear and Ragged Staff. Passing through the arch, we find ourselves in a quad rangle, or enclosed court, such as always formed the cen tral part of a great family residence in Queen Elizabeth's time, and earlier. There can hardly be a more perfect specimen of such an establishment than Leicester's Hos pital. The quadrangle is a sort of sky-roofed hall, to which there is convenient access from all parts of the house. The four inner fronts, with their high, steep roofs and sharp gables, look into it from antique windows, and through open corridors and galleries along the sides ; and there seems to be a richer display of architectural devices and ornaments, quainter can-ings in oak, and more fantastic shapes of the timber framework, than on the side toward the street. On the wall opposite the arched entrance are the following inscriptions, comprising such moral rules, I presume, as were deemed most essen tial for the daily observance of the community: " &)OU- or all Jttcn" — "jFeac <£crtr" — "ftonor tije Stllfi " — " Hot)? tlje JSCOtfjerfjOOtl " ; and again, as if tliis latter injunction needed emphasis and repeti tion among a household of aged people soured with tho ABOUT WARWICK. 87 fiar affeCtt'OllCft 0110 tO another." One sentence, over a door communicating with the Master's side of the house, is addressed to that dignitary, — " Jfyt tljflt tUlttf) OfceC men mUSt fie jUSt." All these are charac tered in old English letters, and form part of the elabo- rate ornamentation of the house. Everywhere — on the walls, over windows and doors, and at all points where there is room to place them — appear escutcheons of arms, cognizances, and crests, emblazoned in their proper colors, and illuminating the ancient quadrangle with their splendor. One of these devices is a large image of a porcupine on an heraldic wreath, being the crest of the Lords de Lisle. But especially is the cognizance of the Bear and Ragged Staff repeated over and over, and over again and again, in a great variety of attitudes, at full- length and half-length, in paint and in oaken sculpture, in bas-relief and rounded image. The founder of the hospital was certainly disposed to reckon his own benefi cence as among the hereditary glories of his race ; and had he lived and died a half-century earlier, he would have kept up an old Catholic custom by enjoining the twelve bedesmen to pray for the welfare of his soul. At my first visit, some of the brethren were seated on the bench outside of the edifice, looking down into the street ; but they did not vouchsafe me a word, and seemed FO estranged from modern life, so enveloped in antique customs and old-fashioned cloaks, that to converse with them would have been like shouting across the gulf be tween our age and Queen Elizabeth's. So I passed into the quadrangle, and found it quite solitary, except that a plain and neat old woman happened to be crossing it. 88 ABOUT WARWICK. will an aspect of business and carefulness that bespoke her JL woman of this world, and not merely a shadow of the past. Asking her if I could come in, she answered very readily and civilly that I might, and said that I was free to look about me, hinting a hope, however, that I would not open the private doors of the brotherhood, as some visitors were in the habit of doing. Under hei guidance, I went into what was formerly the great hall of the establishment, where King James I. had once been feasted by an Earl of Warwick, as is commemorated by an inscription on the cobwebbed and dingy wall. It is a very spacious and barn-like apartment, with a brick floor, and a vaulted roof, the rafters of which are oaken beams, wonderfully carved, but hardly visible in the duski ness that broods aloft. The hall may have made a splen did appearance, when it was decorated with rich tapestry, and illuminated with chandeliers, cressets, and torches glistening upon silver dishes, where King James sat at supper among his brilliantly dressed nobles; but it has come to base uses in these latter days, — being improved, in Yankee phrase, as a brewery and wash-room, and as a cellar for the brethren's separate allotments of coal. The old lady here left me to myself, and I returned into the quadrangle. It was very quiet, very handsome, in its own obsolete style, and must be an exceedingly comfortable place for the old people to lounge in, when the inclement winds render it inexpedient to walk abroad There are shrubs against the wall, on one side ; and on another h a cloistered walk, adorned with stags' heads and antlers, and running beneath a covered gallery, up to which ascends a balustraded staircase. In the portion of the edifice opposite the entrance-arch are the apartment?, ABOUT WARWICK. 3VJ of the Master ; and looking into the window, (as the old woman, at no request of mine, had specially informed me that I might,) I saw a low, but vastly comfortable parlor, very handsomely furnished, and altogether a luxurious place. It had a fireplace with an immense arch, the antique breadth of which extended almost from wall to wall of the room, though now fitted up in such a way that the modern coal-grate looked very diminutive in the midst. Gazing into this pleasant interior, it seemed to me, that, among these venerable surroundings, availing himself of whatever was good in former things, and eking out their imperfection with the results of modern ingenu ity, the Master might lead a not unenviable life. On the cloistered side of the quadrangle, where the dark oak panels made the enclosed space dusky, I beheld a curtained window reddened by a great blaze from within, and heard the bubbling and squeaking of something — doubtless very nice and succulent — that was being cooked at the kitchen-fire. I think, indeed, that a whiff or two of the savory fragrance reached my nostrils ; at all events, the impression grew upon me that Leicester's Hospital is one of the jolliest old domiciles in England. I was about to depart, when another old woman, very plainly dressed, but fat, comfortable, and with a cheerful twinkle in her eyes, came in through the arch, and looked curiously at me. This repeated apparition of the gentle sex (though by no means under its loveliest guise) had still an agreeable effect in modifying my ideas of an institution which I had supposed to be of a stern and monastic character. She asked whether I wished to see the hospital, and said that the porter, whose office it was to attend to visitors, was dead, and would be buried that $0 ABOUT WARWICK. very day, so that the whole establishment could not con* veniently be shown me. She kindly invited me, how ever, to visit the apartment occupied by her husband and herself; so I followed her up the antique staircase, along the gallery, and into a small, oak-panelled parlor, where sat an old man in a long blue garment, who arose and saluted me with m»ch courtesy. He seemed a very quiet person, and yet had a look of travel and adventure, and gray experience, such as I could have fancied in a palmer of ancient times, who might likewise have worn a similar costume. The little room was carpeted and neatly fur nished ; a portrait of its occupant was hanging on the wall ; and. on a table were two swords crossed, — one, probably, his own battle-weapon, and the other, which I drew half out of the scabbard, had an inscription on the blade, purporting that it had been taken from the field of Waterloo. My kind old hostess was anxious to exhibit all the particulars of their housekeeping, and led me into the bedroom, which was in the nicest order, with a snow- white quilt upon the bed; and in a little intervening room was a washing and bathing apparatus, — a conven ience (judging from the personal aspect and atmosphere of such parties) seldom to be met with in the humbler ranks of British life. The old soldier and his wife both seemed glad of some body to talk with ; but the good woman availed herself of the privilege far more copiously than the veteran him- Boif, insomuch that he felt it expedient to give her an occasional nudge with his elbow in her well-padded ribs. " Don't you be so talkative ! " quoth he ; and, indeed, he could hardly .find space for a word, and quite as little after his admonition as before. Her nimble tongue ran ABOUT WARWICK. #1 ovei the whole system of life in the hospital. The breth ren, she said, had a yearly stipend, (the amount of which she did not mention,) and such decent lodgings as I saw, and some other advantages, free ; and, instead of being pestered with a great many rules, and made to dine to gether at a great table, they could manage their little household matters as they liked, buying their own din ii(:rs, and having them cooked in the general kitchen, and eating them snugly in their own parlors. "And," added dhe, rightly deeming this the crowning privilege, " with the Master's permission, they can have their wives to take care of them ; and no harm comes of it ; and what more can an old man desire ? " It was evident enough that the good dame found herself in what she considered very rich clover, and, moreover, had plenty of small occu pations to keep her from getting rusty and dull ; but the veteran impressed me as deriving far less enjoyment from the monotonous ease, without fear of change or hope of improvement, that had followed upon thirty years of peril and vicissitude. I fancied, too, that, while pleased with the novelty of a stranger's visit, he was still a little shy of becoming a spectacle for the stranger's curiosity ; for, if he chose to be morbid about the matter, the establish ment was but an almshouse, in spite of its old-fashioned magnificence, and his fine blue cloak only a pauper's gar ment, with a silver badge on it that perhaps galled h' shoulder. In truth, the badge and the peculiar garb though quite in accordance with the manners of the Eau of Leicester's age, are repugnant to modern prejudices, and might fitly and humanely be abolished. A year or two afterwards I paid another visit to tho hospital, and found a new porter established in office, and 92 ABOUT WARWICK. already capable of talking like a guide-book about the history, antiquities, and present condition of the charity. He informed me that the twelve brethren are selected from among old soldiers of good character, whose other resources must not exceed an income of five pounds thus excluding all commissioned officers, whose half-pay would of course be more than that amount. They recehe from the hospital an annuity of eighty pounds each, be sides their apartments, a garment of fine blue cloth, an annual abundance of ale, and a privilege at the kitchen- fire ; so that, considering the class from which they are taken, they may well reckon themselves among the for tunate of the earth. Furthermore, they are invested with political rights, acquiring a vote for member of Par liament in virtue either of their income or brotherhood. On the other hand, as regards their personal freedom or conduct, they are subject to a supervision which the Mas ter of the hospital might render extremely annoying, were he so inclined ; but the military restraint under which they have spent the active portion of their lives makes it easier for them to endure the domestic discipline here imposed upon their age. The porter bore his testi mony (whatever were its value) to their being as con tented and happy as such a set of old people could possibly be, and affirmed that they spent much time 'n burnishing their silver badges, and were as proud of them as a nobleman of his star. These badges, by-the- by, except one that was stolen and replaced in Queen Anne's time, are the very same that decorated the orig inal twelve brethren. I have seldom met with a better guide than my friend the porter. He appeared to take a genuine interest in ABOUT WARWICK. 93 the peculiarities of the establishment, and yet had an existence apart from them, so that he could the better estimate what those peculiarities were. To be sure, his knowledge and observation were confined to external things, but, so far, had a sufficiently extensive scope. He led me up the staircase and exhibited portions of the timber framework of the edifice that are reckoned to be eight or nine hundred years old, and are still neither worm-eaten nor decayed ; and traced out what had been a great hall, in the days of the Catholic fraternity, though its area is now filled up with the apartments of the twelve brethren ; and pointed to ornaments of sculptured oak, done in an ancient religious style of art, but hardly vis ible amid the vaulted dimness of the roof. Thence we went to the chapel — the Gothic church which I noted several pages back — surmounting the gateway that stretches half across the street. Here the brethren attend daily prayer, and have each a prayer-book of the finest paper, with a fair, large type for their old eyes. The interior of the chapel is very plain, with a picture of no merit for an altar-piece, and a single old pane of painted glass in the great eastern window, rep resenting — no saint, nor angel, as is customary in such cases — but that grim sinner, the Earl of Leicester. Nevertheless, amid so many tangible proofs of his human sympathy, one comes to doubt whether the Earl could liMve been such a hardened reprobate, after all. We ascended the tower of the chapel, and looked down between its battlements into the street, a hundred feet below us ; while clambering half-way up were fox glove-flowers, weeds, small shrubs, and tufts of grass, that had rooted themselves into the roughnesses of the stone 94 ABOUT WARWICK. foundation. Far around us lay a rich and lovely English landscape, with many a church-spire and noble country- seat, and several objects of high historic interest. Edge Hill, where the Puritans defeated Charles L, is in sight on the edge of the horizon, and much nearer stands the house where Cromwell lodged on tho night before the battle. Right under our eyes, and half-enveloping the town with its high-shouldering wall, so that all the closely compacted streets seemed but a precinct of the estate, was the Earl of Warwick's delightful park, a wide extent of sunny lawns, interspersed with broad contiguities of forest-shade. Some of the cedars of Leb anon were there, — a growth of trees in which the War wick family take an hereditary pride. The two highest towers of the castle heave themselves up out of a mass of foliage, and look down in a lordly manner upon the plebeian roofs of the town, a part of which are slate-cov ered, (these are the modern houses,) and a part are coated with old red tiles, denoting the more ancient edifices. A hundred and sixty or seventy years ago, a great fire destroyed a considerable portion of the toAvn, and doubtless annihilated many structures of a remote antiquity ; at least, there was a possibility of very old houses in the long past of Warwick, which King Cymbeline is said to have founded in the year ONE of the Christian era ! And this historic fact or poetic fiction, whichever it may be, brings to mind a more indestructible reality than any tiling else that has occurred within the present field of our vision; though this includes the scene of Guy of Warwick's legendary exploits, and some of those of the Round Table, to say nothing of the Battle of Edge Hill. ABOUT WARWICK. 95 For perhaps it was in the landscape now under our eyes that Posthumus wandered with the King's daughter, the sweet, chaste, faithful, and courageous Imogen, the ten- derest and womanliest woman that Shakspeare ever made immortal in the world. The silver Avon, which we see flowing so quietly by the gray castle, may have held their images in its bosom. The day, though it began brightly, had long been over cast, and the clouds now spat down a few spiteful drops upon us, besides that the east-wind was very chill; so we descended the winding tower-stair, and went next into the garden, one side of which is shut in by almost the only remaining portion of the old city-wall. A part of the garden-ground is devoted to grass and shrubbery, and permeated by gravel- walks, in the centre of one of which is a beautiful stone vase of Egyptian sculpture, that for merly stood on the top of a Nilometer, or graduated pillar for measuring the rise and fall of the River Nile. On the pedestal is a Latin inscription by Dr. Parr, who (his vicarage of Hatton being so close at hand) was probably often the Master's guest, and smoked his interminable pipe along these garden-walks. Of the vegetable-garden, which lies adjacent, the lion's share is appropriated to the Master, and twelve small, separate patches to the individual brethren, who cultivate them at their own judgment and by their own labor ; and their beans and cauliflowers have a better flavor, I doubt not, than if they had received them directly from the dead hand of the Earl of Leicester, like the rest of their food. In the farther part of the garden is an arbor for the old men's pleasure and convenience, and I should like well to sit down among them there, and find out what is really 90 ABOUT WARWICK. the bitter and the sweet of such a sort of life. As for the old gentlemen themselves, they put me queerly in mind of the Salem Custom-House, and the venerable personages whom I found so quietly at anchor there. The Master's residence, forming one entire side of the quadrangle, fronts on the garden, and wears an aspect at once stately and homely. It can hardly have undergone any perceptible change within three centuries; but the garden, into which its old windows look, has probably put off a great many eccentricities and quaintnesses, in the way of cunningly clipped shrubbery, since the gar dener of Queen Elizabeth's reign threw down his rusty shears and took his departure. The present Master's name is Harris; he is a descendant of the founder's family, a gentleman of independent fortune, and a clergy man of the Established Church, as the regulations of the hospital require him to be. I know not what are his official emoluments ; but, according to all English pre cedent, an ancient charitable fund is certain to be held directly for the behoof of those who administer it, and perhaps incidentally, in a moderate way, for the nominal beneficiaries; and, in the case before us, the twelve brethren being so comfortably provided for, the Master is likely to be at least as comfortable as all the twelve together. Yet I ought not, even in a distant land, to fling an idle gibe against a gentleman of whom I really know nothing, except that the people under his charge bear all possible tokens of being tended and cared for as sedu lously as if each of them sat by a warm fireside of his own, with a daughter bustling round the hearth to make ready his porridge and his titbits. It is delightful to Ihink of the good life which a suitable man, in the ABOUT WARWICK. 07 Master's position, has an opportunity to lead, — linked to time-honored customs, welded in with an ancient sys tem, never dreaming of radical change, and bringing all the mellowness and richness of the past down into these railway-days, which do not compel him or his community to move a whit quicker than of yore. Everybody can appreciate the advantages of going ahead ; it might be well, sometimes, to think whether there is* not a word 01 two to be said in favor of standing still, or going to sleep. From the garden we went into the kitchen, where the fire was burning hospitably, and diffused a genial warmth far and wide, together with the fragrance of some old English roast-beef, which, I think, must at that moment have been done nearly to a turn. The kitchen is a lofty, spacious, and noble room, partitioned off round the fire place, by a sort of semicircular oaken screen, or rather, an arrangement of heavy and high-backed settles, with an ever open entrance between them, on either side of which is the omnipresent image of the Bear and Ragged Staff, three feet high, and excellently carved in oak, now black with time and unctuous kitchen-smoke. The pon derous mantel-piece, likewise of carved oak, towers high towards the dusky ceiling, and extends its mighty breadth to take in a vast area of hearth, the arch of the fireplace being positively so immense that I could compare it to nothing but the city gateway. Above its cavernous open ing were crossed two ancient halberds, the weapons, pos sibly, of soldiers who had fought under Leicester in the Low Countries ; and elsewhere on the walls were dis played several muskets, which some of the present in mates of the hospital may have levelled against the French. Another ornament of the mantel-piece was a 7 98 ABOUT WARWICK. square of silken needlework or embroidery, faded nearly white, but dimly representing that wearisome Bear and Ragged Staff, which we should hardly look twice at, only that it was wrought by the fair fingers of poor Amy Robsart, and beautifully framed in oak from Kenil worth Castle, at the expense of a Mr. Conner, a countryman of our own. Certainly, no Englishman would be capable of this little bit of enthusiasm. Finally, the kitchen-fire light glistens on a splendid display of copper flagons, all of generous capacity, and one of them about as big as a half-barrel; the smaller vessels contain the customary allowance of ale, and the larger one is filled with that foaming liquor on four festive occasions of the year, and emptied amain by the jolly brotherhood. I should be glad to see them do it ; but it would be an exploit fitter for Queen Elizabeth's age than these degenerate times. The kitchen is the social hall of the twelve brethren. In the daytime, they bring their little messes to be cooked here, and eat them in their own parlors ; but after a certain hour, the great hearth is cleared and swept, and the old men assemble round its blaze, each with his tank ard and his pipe, and hold high, converse through the evening. If the Master be a fit man for his office, me- thinks he will sometimes sit down sociably among them ; for there is an elbow-chair by the fireside which it would not demean his dignity to fill, since it was occupied by King James at the great festival of nearly three centuries ago. A sip of the ale and a whiff of the tobacco-pipe would put him in friendly relations with his venerable household ; and then we can fancy him instructing them by pithy apothegms and religious texts which were first uttered here by some Catholic p/iest and have impreg- ABOUT WARWICK. 99 nated the atmosphere ever since. If a joke goes round, it shall be of an elder coinage than Joe Miller's, as old as Lord Bacon's collection, or as the jest-book that Master Slender asked for when he lacked small-talk for sweet Anne Page. No news shall be spoken of, later than the drifting ashore, on the northern coast, of some stern-post or figure-head, a barnacled fragment of one of the great galleons of the Spanish Armada. What a tremor would pass through the antique group, if a damp newspaper should suddenly be spread to dry before the fire ! They would feel as if either that printed sheet or they them selves must be an unreality. What a mysterious awe, if the shriek of the railway-train, as it reaches the Warwick station, should ever so faintly invade their ears ! Move ment of any kind seems inconsistent with the stability of such an institution. Nevertheless, I trust that the ages will carry it along with them ; because it is such a pleasant kind of dream for an American to find his way thither, and behold a piece of the sixteenth century set into our prosaic times, and then to depart, and think of its arched door-way as a spell-guarded entrance which will never be accessible or visible to him any more. Not far from the market-place of Warwick stands the great church of St. Mary's : a vast edifice, indeed, and almost worthy to be a cathedral. People who pretend to skill in such matters say that it is in a poor style of architecture, though designed (or, at least, extensively restored) by Sir Christopher Wren ; but I thought it very striking, with its wide, high, and elaborate windows, its tall towers, its immense length, and (for it was long before I outgrew thif» Americanism, the love of an old thing merely for the sake of its age) the tinge of gray 100 ABOUT WARWICK. antiquity over the whole. Once, while I stood gazing up at the tower, the clock struck twelve with a very deep intonation, and immediately some chimes began to play, and kept up their resounding music for five minutes, as measured by the hand upon the dial. It was a very delightful harmony, as airy as the notes of birds, and seemed a not unbecoming freak of half-sportive fancy in Ihe huge, ancient, and solemn church ; although I have seen an old-fashioned parlor-clock that did precisely the same thing, in its small way. The great attraction of this edifice is the Beauchamp (or, as the English, who delight in vulgarizing their fine old Norman names, call it, the Beechum) Chapel, where the Earls of Warwick and their kindred have been buried, from four hundred years back till within a recent period. It is a stately and very elaborate chapel, with a large window of ancient painted glass, as perfectly pre served as any that I remember seeing in England, and remarkably vivid in its colors. Here are several monu ments with marble figures recumbent upon them, repre senting the Earls in their knightly armor, and their dames in the ruffs and court-finery of their day, looking hardly stiffer in stone than they must needs have been in their starched linen and embroidery. The renowned Earl of Leicester of Queen Elizabeth's time, the bene factor of the hospita!, reclines at full length on the tablet of one of these tombs, side by side with his Countess, — not Amy Robsait, but a lady who (unless I have confused the story with some other mouldy scandal) is said to have avenged poor Amy's murder by poisoning the Earl him self. Be that as it may, both figures, and especially the Earl, look like the very types of ancient Honor and Con- ABOUT WARWICK. 10} jugal Faith. In consideration of his long-enduring kinct ness to the twelve brethren, I cannot consent to believe him as wicked as he is usually depicted ; and it seems a marvel, now that so many well-established historical ver- diote have been reversed, why some enterprising writer does not make out Leicester to have been the pattern lObleman of his age. In the centre of the chapel is the magnificent memo rial of its founder, Richard Beauchamp, Earl of War wick in the time of Henry VI. On a richly ornamented altar-tomb of gray marble lies the bronze figure of a knight in gilded armor, most admirably executed : for the sculptors of those days had wonderful skill in *heir own style, and could make so life-like an image of a warrior, in brass or marble, that, if a trumpet were sounded over his tomb, you would expect him to start up and handle his sword. The Earl whom we now speak of, however, has slept soundly in spite of a more serious disturbance than any blast of a trumpet, unless it were the final one. Some centuries after his death, th« floor of the chapel fell down and broke open the Ftone coffin in which he was buried ; and among the fragment* appeared the anciently entombed Earl of Warwick, with the color scarcely faded out of his cheeks, his eyes a little sunken, but in other respects looking as natural as if he had died yesterday. But exposure to the atmosphere appeared to begin and finish the long-delayed process of decay in a moment, causing him to vanish like a bubble ; so that, almost before there had been time to wonder ot him, there was nothing left of the stalwart Earl save hia hair. This sole relic the ladies of Warwick made prize of, and braided it into rings and brooches for their own 102 ABOUT WARWICK. adornment; and thus, with, a chapel and a ponderous tomb built on purpose to protect his remains, this great nobleman could not help being brought untimely to the light of day, nor even keep his lovelocks on his skull after he had so long done with love. There seems to be a fatality that disturbs people in their sepulchres, when they have been over-careful to render them magnificent and impregnable, — as witness the builders of the Pyra mids, and Hadrian, Augustus, and the Scipios, and most other personages whose mausoleums have been conspicu ous enough to attract the violator ; and as for dead men's hair, I have seen a lock of King Edward the Fourth's, of a reddish-brown color, which perhaps was once twisted round the delicate forefinger of Mistress Shore. The direct lineage of the renowned characters that lie buried in this splendid chapel has long been extinct. The earldom is now held by the Grevilles, descendants of the Lord Brooke who was slain in the Parliamentary War ; and they have recently (that is to say, within a century) built a burial-vault on the other side of the church, cal culated (as the sexton assured me, with a nod as if he were pleased) to afford suitable and respectful ac commodation to as many as fourscore coffins. Thank Heaven, the old man did not call them " CASKETS " ! — a vile modern phrase, which compels a person of sense and good taste to shrink more disgustfully than ever before from the idea of being buried at all. But a? regards those eighty coffins, only sixteen have as yet been contributed ; and it may be a question with some minds, not merely whether the Grevilles will hold the earldom of Warwick until the full number shall be made up, but whether earldoms and all manner of lordships ABOI'T WARWICK. 103 mil not have faded out of England long before those many generations shall have passed from the castle to ihe vault. I hope not. A titled and landed aristocracy, if anywise an evil and an incumbrance, is so only to the nation which is doomed to bear it on its shoulders ; and an American, whose sole relation to it is to admire its picturesque effect upon society, ought to be the last mar to quarrel with what affords him so much gratuitous en joyment. Nevertheless, conservative as England is, and though I scarce ever found an Englishman who seemed really to desire change, there was continually a dull sound in my ears as if the old foundations of things were crumbling away. Some time or other, — by no irrever ent effort of violence, but, rather, in spite of all pious efforts to uphold a heterogeneous pile of institutions that will have outlasted their vitality, — at some unexpected moment, there must come a terrible crash. The sole reason why I should desire it to happen in my day is, that I might be there to see ! But the ruin of my own country is, perhaps, all that I am destined to witness ; and that immense catastrophe (though I am strong in the faith that there is a national lifetime of a thousand years in us yet) would serve any man well enough as his final spectacle on earth. If the visitor is inclined to carry away any little me morial of Warwick he had better go to an Old Curi osity Shop in the High Street, where there is a vast quantity of obsolete gewgaws, great and small, and many of them so pretty and ingenious that you wonder how they came to be thrown aside and forgotten. As regards its minor tastes, the world changes, but does not improve it appears to me, indeed, that there have been epochs of 101 ABOUT WARWICK. far more exquisite fancy than the present one, in matters of personal ornament, and such delicate trifles as we put upon a drawing-room table, a mantel-piece, or a what not. The shop in question is near the East Gate, but ig hardly to be found without careful search, being denoted only by the name of " REDFERN," painted not very con spicuously in the top-light of the door. Immediately on entering, we find ourselves among a confusion of old rub bish and valuables, ancient armor, historic portraits, ebony cabinets inlaid with pearl, tall, ghostly clocks, hideous old china, dim looking-glasses in frames of tarnished magnifi cence, — a thousand objects of strange aspect, and others that almost frighten you by their likeness in unlikeness to things now in use. It is impossible to give an idea of the variety of articles, so thickly strewn about that we can scarcely move without overthrowing some great curi osity with a crash, or sweeping away some small one hitched to our sleeves. Three stories of the entire house are crowded in like manner. The collection, even as we see it exposed to view, must have been got together at great cost ; but the real treasures of the establishment lie in secret repositories, whence they are not likely to be drawn forth at an ordinary summons ; though, if a gentleman with a competently long purse should call for them, I doubt not that the signet-ring of Joseph's friend Pharaoh, or the Duke of Alva's leading-staff, or the dag ger that killed the Duke of Buckingham, (all of which I have seen,) or any other almost incredible thing, might make its appearance. Gold snuff-boxes, antique gems, jewelled goblets, Venetian wine-gla,sses, (which burst when poison is poured into them, and therefore must not be used for modern wine-drinking.) jasper-handled knives, ABOUT WARWICK. 103 painted Sevres tea-cups, — in short, there are all sorts of things that a virtuoso ransacks the world to discover. It would be easier to spend a hundred pounds in Mr. Redfern's shop than to keep the money in one's pocket ; but, for my part, I contented myself with buying a little old spoon of silver-gilt, and fantastically shaped, and got it at all the more reasonable rate because there hap pened to be no legend attached to it. I could supply any deficiency of that kind at much less expense than regilding the spoon! RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. FROM Leamington to Stratford-on-Avon the distance is eight or nine miles, over a road that seemed to me most beautiful. Not that I can recall any memorable peculiarities ; for the country, most of the way, is a suc cession of the gentlest swells and subsidences, affording wide and far glimpses of champaign scenery here and there, and sinking almost to a dead level as we draw near Stratford. Any landscape in New England, even the tamest, has a more striking outline, and besides would have its blue eyes open in those lakelets that we encoun ter almost from mile to mile at home, but of which the Old Country is utterly destitute ; or it would smile in our faces through the medium of the wayside brooks that vanish under a low stone arch on one side of the road, and sparkle out again on the other. Neither of these pretty features is often to be found in an English scene. The charm of the latter consists in the rich verdure of the fields, in the stately wayside trees and carefully kept plantations of wood, and in the old and high cultivation that has humanized the very sods by mingling so much of man's toil and care among them. To an American there is a kind of sanctity even in an English turnip- lield, when he thinks how long that small square of ground has been known and recognized as a possession. RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 107 transmitted from father to son, trodden often by memora ble feet, and utterly redeemed from savagery by old ac quaintanceship with civilized eyes. The wildest things in England are more than half tame. The trees, for instance, whether in hedge-row, park, or what they call forest, have nothing wild about them. They are never ragged ; there is a certain decorous restraint in the freest outspread of their branches, though they spread wider than any self-nurturing tree ; they are tall, vigorous, bulky, with a look of age-long life, and a promise of more years to come, all of which will bring them into closer kindred with the race of man. Somebody or other has known them from the sapling upward ; and if they en dure long enough, they grow to be traditionally observed and honored, and connected with the fortunes of old fami lies, till, like Tennyson's Talking Oak, they babble with a thousand leafy tongues to ears that can understand them. An American tree, however, if it could grow in fair competition with an English one of similar species, would probably be the more picturesque object of the two. The Warwickshire elm has not so beautiful a shape as those that overhang our village street ; and as for the redoubta ble English oak, there is a certain John Bullism in its figure, a compact rotundity of foliage, a lack of irregular and various outline, that make it look wonderfully like a gigantic cauliflower. Its leaf, too, is much smaller than that of most varieties of American oak ; nor do I mean to doubt that the latter, with free leave to grow, reverent care and cultivation, and immunity from the axe, would live out its centuries as sturdily as its English brother, and prove far the nobler and more majestic specimen of 103 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. a tree at the end of them. Still, however one's Yankee patriotism may struggle against the admission, it must be owned that the trees and other objects of an English landscape take hold of the observer by numberless minute tendrils, as it were, which, look as closely as we choose, we never find in an American scene. The parasitic growth is so luxuriant, that the trunk of the tree, so gray and dry in our climate, is better worth observing than the boughs and foliage ; a verdant mossiness coats it all over ; so that it looks almost as green as the leaves ; and often, moreover, the stately stem is clustered about, high upward, with creeping and twining shrubs, the ivy, and sometimes the mistletoe, close-clinging friends, nurtured by the moisture and never too fervid sunshine, and sup porting themselves by the old tree's abundant strength. We call it a parasitical vegetation ; but, if the phrase imply any reproach, it is unkind to bestow it on this beautiful affection and relationship which exist in Eng land between one order of plants and another : the strong tree being always ready to give support to the trailing shrub, lift it to the sun, and feed it out of its own heart, if it crave such food ; and the shrub, on its part, repaying its foster-father with an ample luxuriance of beauty, and adding Corinthian grace to the tree's lofty strength. No bitter winter nips these tender little sympathies, no hot sun burns the life out of them ; and therefore they out last the longevity of the oak, and, if the woodman per mitted, would bury it in a green grave, when all is over. Should there be nothing else along the road to look at, an English hedge might well suffice to occupy the eyes, and, to a depth beyond what he would suppose, the heart of an American. We often set out hed«»v}s in our own RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 109 soil, but might as well set out figs or pine -apples and ex pect to gather fruit of them. Something grows, to be sure, which we choose to call a hedge ; but it lacks the dense, luxuriant variety of vegetation that is accumulated into the English original, in which a botanist would find u thousand shrubs and gracious herbs that the hedge- maker never thought of planting there. Among them, growing wild, are many of the kindred blossoms of the very flowers which our pilgrim fathers brought from Eng land, for the sake of their simple beauty and home-like associations, and which we have ever since been cultivat ing in gardens. There is not a softer trait to be found in the character of those stern men than that they should have been sensible of these flower-roots clinging among the fibres of their rugged hearts, and have felt the neces sity of bringing them over sea and making them heredi tary in the new land, instead of trusting to what rarer beauty the wilderness might have in store for them. Or, if the roadside has no hedge, the ugliest stone fence (such as, in America, would keep itself bare and unsympathizing till the end of time) is sure to be covered with the small handiwork of Nature ; that careful mother lets nothing go naked there, and, if she cannot provide clothing, gives at least embroidery. No sooner is the fence built than she adopts and adorns it as a part of her original plan, treating the hard, uncomely construction as if it had all along been a favorite idea >f her own. A little sprig of ivy may be seen creeping up the side of the low wall and clinging fast with its many feet to the rough surface ; a tuft of grass roots itself between two of the stones, where a pinch or two of wayside dust has been moistened into nutritious soil for it : a small bunch 110 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. of fern grows in another crevice ; a deep, soft, verdant moss spreads itself along the top and over all the availa ble inequalities of the fence ; and where nothing else will grow, lichens stick tenaciously to the bare stones and va riegate the monotonous gray with hues of yellow and red. Finally, a great deal of shrubbery clusters along the base of the stone wall, and takes away the hardness of its out line ; and in due time, as the upshot of these apparently aimless or sportive touches, we recognize that the benefi cent Creator of all things, working through His hand maiden whom we call Nature, has deigned to mingle a charm of divine gracefulness even with so earthly an in stitution as a boundary fence. The clown who wrought at it little dreamed what fellow-laborer he had. The English should send us photographs of portions of the trunks of trees, the tangled and various products of a hedge, and a square foot of an old wall. They can hardly send anything else so characteristic. Their artists, especially of the later school, sometimes toil to depict such subjects, but are apt to stiffen the lithe tendrils in the process. The poets succeed better, with Tennyson at their head, and often produce ravishing effects by dint of a tender minuteness of touch, to which the genius of the soil and climate artfully impels them : for, as regards grandeur, there are loftier scenes in many countries than the best that England can show ; but, for the picturesque- ness of the smallest object that lies under its gentle gloom and sunshine, there is no scenery like it anywhere. In the foregoing paragraphs I have strayed away to a long distance from the road to Stratford-on-Avon ; for I remember no such stone fences as I have been speaking t>f in Warwickshire, nor elsewhere in England, except RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. Ill among the Lakes, or in Yorkshire, and the rough and hilly countries to the north of it. Hedges there were along my road, however, and broad, level fields, rustic hamlets, and cottages of ancient date, — from the roof of one of which the occupant was tearing away the thatch, and showing what an accumulation of dust, dirt, mouldi- ness, roots of weeds, families of mice, swallows' nests, and hordes of insects, had been deposited there since that old straw was new. Estimating its antiquity from these tokens, Shakspeare himself, in one of his morning ram bles out of his native town, might have seen the thatch laid on ; at all events, the cottage-walls were old enough to have known him as a guest. A few modern villas were also to be seen, and perhaps there were mansions of old gentility at no great distance, but hidden among trees ; for it is a point of English pride that such houses seldom allow themselves to be visible from the high-road. In short, I recollect nothing specially remarkable along the way, nor in the immediate approach to Stratford; and yet the picture of that June morning has a glory in my memory, owing chiefly, I believe, to the charm of the English summer-weather, the really good days of which are the most delightful that mortal man can ever hope to be favored with. Such a genial warmth ! A little too warm, it might be, yet only to such a degree as to assure an American (a certainty to which he seldom attains till attempered to the customary austerity of an English sum mer-day) that he was quite warm enough. And after all, there was an unconquerable freshness in the atmos phere, which every little movement of a breeze shook over me like a dash of the ocean-spray. Such days need bring us no other happiness than their own light 112 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. and temperature. No doubt, I could not have enjoyed it so exquisitely, except that there must be still latent in us Western wanderers (even after an absence of two cen turies and more), an adaptation to the English climate which makes us sensible of a motherly kindness in its scantiest sunshine, and overflows us with delight at its more lavish smiles. The spire of Shakspeare's church — the Church of (he Holy Trinity — begins to show itself among the trees at a little distance from Stratford. Next we see the shabby old dwellings, intermixed with mean-looking houses of modern date ; and the streets being quite level, you are struck and surprised by nothing so much as the tameness of the general scene ; as if Shakspeare's genius were vivid enough to have wrought pictorial splendors in the town where he was born. Here and there, however, a queer edifice meets your eye, endowed with the individuality that belongs only to the domestic architecture of times gone by ; the house seems to have grown out of some odd quality in its inhabitant, as a sea- shell is moulded from within by the character of its inmate ; and having been built in a strange fashion, generations ago, it has ever since been growing stranger and quainter, as old humorists are apt to do. Here, too, (as so often impressed me in decayed English towns,) there appeared to be a greater abundance of aged people wearing small-clothes and leaning on sticks than you could assemble on our side of the water by sounding a trumpet and proclaiming a reward for the most vener able. I tried to account for this phenomenon by several theories : as, for example, that our new towns are uu wholesome for age and kill it off unseasonably ; or that RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 113 our old men have a subtile sense of fitness, and die of their own accord rather than Jwe in an unseemly contrast with youth and novelty : but the secret may be, after all, that hair-dyes, false teeth, modern arts of dress, and other contrivances of a skin-deep youthfulness, have not crept into these antiquated English towns, and so people grow old without the weary necessity of seeming younger than they are. After wandering through two or three streets, I found my way to Shakspeare's birthplace, which is almost a smaller and humbler house than any description can pre pare the visitor to expect ; so inevitably does an august inhabitant make his abode palatial to our imaginations, receiving his guests, indeed, in a castle hi the air, until we unwisely insist on meeting him among the sordid lanes and alleys of lower earth. The portion of the edi fice with which Shakspeare had anything to do is hardly large enough, in the basement, to contain the butcher's stall that one of his descendants kept, and that still re mains there, windowless, with the cleaver-cuts in its hacked counter, which projects into the street under a little penthouse-roof, as if waiting for a new occupant. The upper half of the door was open, and, on my rap ping at it, a young person in black made her appearance and admitted me : she was not a menial, but remarkably genteel (an American characteristic) for an English girl, and was probably the daughter of the old gentlewoman who takes care of the house. This lower room has » pavement of gray slabs of stone, which may have been rudely squared when the house was new, but are now aV cracked, broken, and disarranged in a most unaccountable way. One does not see how any ordinary usage, fo? J14 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. whatever length of time, should have so smashed these heavy stones ; it is as if an earthquake had burst up through the floor, which afterwards had been imperfectly trodden down again. The room is whitewashed and very clean, but wofully shabby and dingy, coarsely built, and such as the most poetical imagination would find it diffi cult to idealize. In the rear of this apartment is the kitchen, a still smaller room, of a similar rude aspect ; it has a great, rough fireplace, with space for a large family imder the blackened opening of the chimney, and an im mense passage-way for the smoke, through which Shak- speare may have seen the blue sky by day and the stars glimmering down at him by night. It is now a dreary spot where the long-extinguished embers used to be. A glowing fire, even if it covered only a quarter part of the hearth, might still do much towards making the old kitchen cheerful. But we get a depressing idea of the stifled, poor, sombre kind of life that could have been lived in such a dwelling, where this room seems to have been the gathering-place of the family, with no breadth or scope, no good retirement, but old and young, huddling together cheek by jowl. What a hardy piant was Shak- speare's genius, how fatal its development, since it could not be blighted in such an atmosphere ! It only brought human nature the closer to him, and put more unctuous earth about his roots. Thence I was ushered up-stairs to the room in which Shakspeare is supposed to have been born : though, if you peep too curiously into the matter, you may find the shadow of an ugly doubt on this, as well as most other points of his mysterious life. It is the chamber over the butcher's shop, and is lighted by one broad window con- RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 115 talning a great many small, irregular panes of glass. The floor is made of planks, very rudely hewn, and fit ting together with little neatness ; the naked beams and rafters, at the sides of the room and overhead, bear the original marks of the builder's broad-axe, with no evi dence of an attempt to smooth off the job. Again we have to reconcile ourselves to the smallness of the spac< enclosed by these illustrious -- walls, — a circumstance more difficult to accept, as regards places that we have heard, read, thought, and dreamed much about, than any other disenchanting particular of a mistaken ideal. A few paces — perhaps seven or eight — take us from end to end of it. So low it is, that I could easily touch tho ceiling, and might have done so without a tiptoe-stretch, had it been a good deal higher ; and this humility of the chamber has tempted a vast multitude of people to write their names overhead in pencil. Every inch of the side- walls, even into the obscurest nooks and corners, is covered with a similar record ; all the window-panes, moreover, are scrawled with diamond signatures, among which is said to be that of Walter Scott; but so many persons have sought to immortalize themselves in close vicinity to his name that I really could not trace him out. Me- thinks it is strange that people do not strive to forget their forlorn little identities, in such situations, instead of thrusting them forward into the dazzle of a great renown, where, if noticed, they cannot but be deemed impertinent. This room, and the entire house, so far as I saw it, are whitewashed and exceedingly clean; nor is there the aged, musty smell with which old Chester first made me acquainted, and which goes far to cure an Ameri can of his excessive predilection for antique residences. 116 RECOI LECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. An old lady, who took charge of me up-stairs, had the manners and aspect of a gentlewoman, and talked with somewhat formidable knowledge and appreciative in telligence about Shakspeare. Arranged on a table and in chairs were various prints, views of houses and scenes connected with Shakspeare's memory, together with edi tions of his works and local publications about his home and haunts, from the sale of which this respectable lady perhaps realizes a handsome profit. At any rate, I bought a good many of them, conceiving that it might be the civillest way of requiting her for her instructive conversation and the trouble she took in showing me the house. It cost me a pang (not a curmudgeonly, but a gentlemanly one) to offer a downright fee to the lady like girl who had admitted me ; but I swallowed my delicate scruples with some little difficulty, and she di gested hers, so far as I could observe, with no difficulty at all. In fact, nobody need fear to hold out half a crown to any person with whom he has occasion to speak a word in England. I should consider it unfair to quit Shakspeare's house without the frank acknowledgment that I was conscious of not the slightest emotion while viewing it, nor any quickening of the imagination. This has often happened to me in my visits to memorable places. Whatever pretty and apposite reflections I may have made upon the subject had either occurred to me before I ever saw Stratford, or have been elaborated since. It is pleasant, nevertheless, to think that I have seen the place ; and I believe that I can form a more sensible and vivid idea of Shakspeare as a flesh-and-blood individual now that I have stood on the kitchen-hearth arid in the birth RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 117 chamber ; but I am not quite certain that this power of realization is altogether desirable in reference to a great poet. The Shakspeare whom I met there took various guises, but had not his laurel on. He was successively the roguish boy, — the youthful deer-stealer — the com rade of players, — the too familiar friend of Davenant' mother, — the careful, thrifty, thriven man of property who came back from London to lend money on bond, and occupy the best house in Stratford, — the mellow, red nosed, autumnal boon-companion of John a' Combe — and finally, (or else the Stratford gossips belied him,) the victim of convivial habits who met his death by tumbling into a ditch on his way home from a drinking-bout, and left his second-best bed to his poor wife. I feel, as sensibly as the reader can, what horrible im piety it is to remember these things, be they true or false. In either case, they ought to vanish out of sight on the distant ocean-line of the past, leaving a pure, white mem ory, even as a sail, though perhaps darkened with many stains, looks snowy white on the far horizon. But I draw a moral from these unworthy reminiscences and this embodiment of the poet, as suggested by some of the grimy actualities of his life. It is for the high in terests of the world not to insist upon finding out that its greatest men are, in a certain lower sense, very much the same kind of men as the rest of us, and often a little worse ; because a common mind cannot properly digest such a discovery, nor ever know the true proportion of the great man's good and evil, nor how small a part of him it was that touched our muddy or dusty earth. Thence comes moral bewilderment, and even intellectual loss, in regard to what is best of |iim. When Shakspearo 118 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. invoked a curse on the man who should stir his bones, he perhaps meant the larger share of it for him or them who should pry into his perishing earthliness, the defects or even the merits of the character that he wore in Strat ford, when he had left mankind so much to muse upon that was imperishable and divine. Heaven keep me from incurring any part of the anathema in requital for the irreverent sentences above written ! From Shakspeare's house, the next step, of course, is to visit his burial-place. The appearance of the church is most venerable and beautiful, standing amid a great green shadow of lime-trees, above which rises the spire, while the Gothic battlements and buttresses and vast arched windows are obscurely seen through the boughs. The Avon loiters past the churchyard, an exceedingly sluggish river, which might seem to have been consider ing which way it should flow ever since Shakspeare left off paddling in it and gathering the large forget-me-nots that grow among its flags and water-weeds. An old man in small-clothes was waiting at the gate ; and inquiring whether I wished to go in, he preceded me to the church-porch, and rapped. I could have done it quite as effectually for myself; but it seems, the old peo ple of the neighborhood haunt about the churchyard, in spite of the frowns and remonstrances of the sexton, who grudges them the half-eleemosynary sixpence which they sometimes get from visitors. I was admitted into the church by a respectable-looking and intelligent man in black, the parish-clerk, I suppose, and probably holding a richer incumbency than his vicar, if all the fees which he handles remain in his own pocket. He was already exhibitii'g the Shakspeare monuments to two or three RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 119 visitors, and several other parties came in while I was there. The poet and his family are in possession of what may be considered the very best burial-places that the church af fords. They lie in a row, right across the breadth of the chancel, the foot of each gravestone being close to the ele vated floor on which the altar stands. Nearest to the side- wall, beneath Shakspeare's bust, is a slab bearing a Latin inscription addressed to his wife, and covering her re mains ; then his own slab, with the old anathematizing stanza upon it ; then that of Thomas Nash, who married his grand-daughter ; then that of Dr. Hall, the husband of his daughter Susannah ; and, lastly, Susannah's own. Shakspeare's is the commonest-looking slab of all, being just such a flag-stone as Essex Street in Salem used to be paved with, when I was a boy. Moreover, unless my eyes or recollection deceive me, there is a crack across it, as if it had already undergone some such violence as the inscription deprecates. Unlike the other monuments of the family, it bears no name, nor am I acquainted with the grounds or authority on which it is absolutely determined to he Shakspeare's ; although, being in a range with those of his wife and children, it might naturally be attributed to him. But, then, why does his wife, who died afterwards, take precedence of him and occupy the place next his bust? And where are the graves of another daughter and a son, who have a better right in the family-row than Thomas Nash, his grand- son-in-law ? Might not one or both of them have been laid under the nameless stone ? But it is dangerous trifling with Shakspeare's dust ; so I forbear to meddle further with the grave, (though the prohibition makes it 120 RECOIJ/F.CTIONS OF A Gil IED WOMAN". tempting,) and shall let whatever bones be in it rest in peace. Yet I must needs add that the inscription on the bust seems to imply that Shakspeare's grava was directly underneath it. The poet's bust is affixed to the northern jyall of the church, the base of it being about a man's height, or rather more, above the floor of the chancel. The fea tures of this piece of sculpture are entirely uiJike any portrait of Shakspeare that I have ever seen, and compel me to take down the beautiful, lofty-browed, and noble picture of him which has hitherto hung in my mental portrait gallery. The bust cannot be said to represent a beautiful face or an eminently noble head ; but it clutches firmly hold of one's sense of reality and insists upon your accepting it, if not as Shakspeare the poet, yet as the wealthy burgher of Stratford, the friend of John a* Combe, who lies yonder in the corner. I know not what the phrenologists say to the bust. The forehead is but moderately developed, and retreats somewhat, the upper part of the skull rising pyramidally ; the eyes are prom inent almost beyond the penthouse of the brow ; the upper lip is so long that it must have been almost a deformity, unless the sculptor artistically exaggerated its length, in consideration, that, on the pedestal, it must be foreshortened by being looked at from below. On the whole, Shakspeare must have had a singular rather than a prepossessing face ; and it is wonderful how, with this bust before its eyes, the world has persisted in maintain ing an erroneous notion of his appearance, allowing paint ers and sculptors to foist their idealized nonsense on ua all, instead of the genuine man. For my part, the Shak speare of my mind's eye is henceforth to be a personage RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN". 121 of a ruddy English complexion, with a reasonably capa cious brow, intelligent and quickly observant eyes, a nose curved slightly outward, a long, queer upper-lip, with the mouth a little unclosed beneath it, and cheeks con siderably developed in the lower part and beneath the chin. But when Shakspeare was himself, (for nine-tentha of the time, according to all appearances, he was but the burgher of Stratford,) he doubtless shone through this dull mask and transfigured it into the face of an angel. Fifteen or twenty feet behind the row of Shakspeare gravestones is the great east-window of the church, now brilliant with stained glass of recent manufacture. On one side of this window, under a sculptured arch of marble, lies a full-length marble figure of John a' Combe, clad in what I take to be a robe of municipal dignity, and holding its hands devoutly clasped. It is a sturdy Eng lish figure, with coarse features, a type of ordinary man whom we smile to see immortalized in the sculpturesque material of poets and heroes ; but the prayerful attitude encourages us to believe that the old usurer may not, after all, have had that grim reception in the other world which Shakspeare's squib foreboded for him. By-the-by, till I grew somewhat familiar with Warwickshire pro nunciation, I never understood that the point of those ill-natured lines was a pun. " l Oho ! ' quoth the Devil, « 't is my John a' Combe I'" — that is, " My John has Close to the poet's bust is a nameless, oblong, cubic tomb, supposed to be that of a clerical dignitary of the fourteenth century. The church has other mural monu ments and altar tombs, one or two of the latter uphold ing the recumbent figures of knights in armor and their 122 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. dames, very eminent and worshipful personages in their day, no doubt, but doomed to appear forever intrusive and impertinent within the precincts which Shakspeare has made his own. His renown is tyrannous, and suffers nothing else to be recognized within the scope of its material presence, unless illuminated by some side-ray from himself. The clerk informed me that interments lao longer take place in any part of the church. And it ;. is better so ; for methinks a person of delicate individu ality, curious about his burial-place, and desirous of six feet of earth for himself alone, could never endure to lie buried near Shakspeare, but would rise up at midnight and grope his way out of the church-door, rather than sleep in the shadow of so stupendous a memory. I should hardly have dared to add another to the innu merable descriptions of Stratford-on-Avon, if it had not seemed to me that this would form a fitting framework to some reminiscences of a very remarkable womaii. Her labor, while she lived, was of a nature and purpose outwardly irreverent to the name of Shakspeare, yet, by its actual tendency, entitling her to the distinction of being that one of all his worshippers who sought, though she knew it not, to place the richest and stateliest diadem upon his brow. We Americans, at least, in the scanty annals of our literature, cannot afford to forget her high and conscientious exercise of noble faculties, which, in deed, if you look at the matter in one way, evolved only a miserable error, but, more fairly considered, produced a result worth almost what it cost her. Her faith in her own ideas was so genuine, that, erroneous as they were, it transmuted them to gold, or, at all events, interfused a large proportion of that precious and indestructible sub- RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 123 stance among the waste material from whicn it can read ily be sifted. The only time I ever saw Miss Bacon was in London, where she had lodgings in Spring Street, Sussex Gar dens, at the house of a grocer, a portly, middle-aged, civil, and friendly man, who, as well as his wife, appeared 10 feel a personal kindness towards their lodger. I was ushered up two (and I rather believe three) pair of stairs into a parlor somewhat humbly furnished, and told that Miss Bacon would come soon. There were a number of books on the table, and, looking into them, I found that every one had some reference, more or less immediate, to her Shakspearian theory, — a volume of Raleigh's " History of the World," a volume of Montaigne, a volume of Lord Bacon's letters, a volume of Shak- speare's plays ; and on another table lay a large roll of manuscript, which I presume to have been a portion of her work. To be sure, there was a pocket-Bible among the books, but everything else referred to the one des potic idea that had got possession of her mind ; and as it had engrossed her whole soul as well as her intellect, I have no doubt that she had established subtile connec tions between it and the Bible likewise. As is apt to be the case with solitary students, Miss Bacon probably read late and rose late ; for I took up Montaigne (it was Haz- litt's translation) and had been reading his journey t< Italy a good while before she appeared. I had expected (the more shame for me, having no other ground of such expectation than that she was a literary woman) to see a very homely, uncouth, elderly personage, and was quite agreeably disappointed by her aspect. She was rather uncommonly tall, and had a 124 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. striking and expressive face, dark hair, dark eyes, which shone with an inward light as soon as she began to speak, and by-and-by a color came into her cheeks and made her look almost young. Not that she really was so ; she must have been beyond middle-age : and there was no imkindness in coming to that conclusion, because, making allowance for years and ill-health, I could suppose her to have been handsome and exceedingly attractive once. Though wholly estranged from society, there was little or no restraint or embarrassment in her manner : lonely people are generally glad to give utterance to their pent- up ideas, and often bubble over with them as freely as children with their new-found syllables. I cannot tell how it came about, but we immediately found ourselves taking a friendly and familiar tone together, and began to talk as if we had known one another a very long while. A little preliminary correspondence had indeed smoothed the way, and we had a definite topic in the contemplated publication of her book. She was very communicative about her theory, and would have been much more so had I desired it ; but, being conscious within myself of a sturdy unbelief, I deemed it fair and honest rather to repress than draw her out upon the subject. Unquestionably, she was a monomaniac ; these overmastering ideas about the au thorship of Shakspeare's plays, and the deep political philosophy concealed beneath the surface of them, had completely thrown her off her balance ; but at the same time they had wonderfully developed her intellect, and made her what she could not otherwise have become. It was a very singular phenomenon : a system of philosophy growing up in this woman's mind without her volition,— RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 125 contrary, in fact, to the determined resistance of her voli tion, — and substituting itself in the place of every tiling that originally grew there. To have based such a sys tem on fancy, and unconsciously elaborated it for herself, was almost as wonderful as really to have found it in the plays. But, in a certain sense, she did actually find it there. Shakspeare has surface beneath surface, to an Immeasurable depth, adapted to the plummet-line of every reader ; his works present many phases of truth, each with scope large enough to fill a contemplative mind. Whatever you seek in him you will surely dis cover, provided you seek truth. There is no exhausting the various interpretation of his symbols ; and a thousand years hence, a world of new readers will possess a whole library of new books, as we ourselves do, in these vol umes old already. I had half a mind to suggest to Miss Bacon this explanation of her theory, but forbore, be cause (as I could readily perceive) she had as princely i spirit as Queen Elizabeth herself, and would at once have motioned me from the room. I had heard, long ago, that she believed that the ma terial evidences of her dogma as to the authorship, to gether with the key of the new philosophy, would be found buried in Shakspeare's grave. Recently, as I understood her, this notion had been somewhat modified, and was now accurately defined and fully developed in her mind, with a result of perfect certainty. In Lord Bacon's letters, on which she laid her finger as she spoke, she had discovered the key and clue to the whole mystery. There were definite and minute instructions how to find a will and other documents relating to the conclave of Elizabethan philosophers, which were con- 126 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. ceaJed (when and by whom she did not inform me) in a hollow space in the under surface of Shakspeare's grave stone. Thus the terrible prohibition to remove the stone was accounted for. The directions, she intimated, went completely and precisely to the point, obviating all diffi culties in the way of coming at the treasure, and even, cf I remember right, were so contrived as to ward off iny troublesome consequences likely to ensue from »he interference of the parish-officers. All that Miss Hacon now remained in England for — indeed, the object •bi which she had come hither, and which had kept her Aere for three years past — was to obtain possession of ihese material and unquestionable proofs of the authen ticity of her theory. Sh<5 communicated all this strange matter in a low, i]uiet tone ; while, on my part, I listened as quietly, and without any expression of dissent. Controversy against a faith so settled would have shut her up at once, and chat, too> without in the least weakening her belief in the uxistenct, of those treasures of the tomb ; and had it been l'<)ssible to convince her of their intangible nature, I ap prehend that there would have been nothing left for the poor enthusiast save to collapse and die. She frankly confessed that she could no longer bear the society of those who did not at least lend a certain sympathy to her views, if not fully share in them ; and meeting little sym pathy or none, she had now entirely secluded herself from v^e world. In all these years, she had seen Mrs. Fariar a few limes, but had long ago given her up, — Carlyle vince or twice, but not of late, although he had received Aei Kmcny; Mr. Buchanan, while minister in England, kwA im«w called on her, and General Campbell, RECOLLECTIONS OF A Gil TED WOMAN. 127 our Consul in London, had met her two or three times on business. With these exceptions which she marked so scrupulously that it was perceptible what epochs they were in the monotonous passage of her days, she had lived in the profoundest solitude. She never walked out ; she suffered much from ill-health ; and yet, she assured me, she was perfectly happy. I could well conceive it ; for Miss Bacon imagined herself to have received (what is certainly the greatest boon ever assigned to mortals) a high mission in the world, with adequate powers for its accomplishment ; and lest even these should prove insufficient, she had faith that special interpositions of Providence were forwarding her human efforts. This idea was continually coming to the surface, during our interview. She believed, for example, that she had been providentially led to her lodging-house and put in relations with the good-natured grocer and his family ; and, to say the truth, considering what a savage and stealthy tribe the London lodging- house keepers usually are, the honest kindness of this man and his household appeared to have been little less than miraculous. Evidently, too, she thought that Prov idence had brought me forward — a man somewhat con nected with literature — at the critical juncture when she needed a negotiator with the booksellers ; and, on my part, though little accustomed to regard myself as a divine minister, and though I might even have preferred that Providence should select some other instrument, I had no scruple in undertaking to do what I could for her. Her book, as I could see by turning it over, was a very remarkable one, and worthy of being offered to the pub lic, which, if wise enough to appreciate it, would be 128 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED TfOMAX. thankful for what was good in it and merciful to its faults. It was founded on a prodigious error, but was "juilt up from that foundation with a good many prodig ious truths. And, at all events, whether I could aid her literary views or no, it would have been both rash and impertinent in me to attempt drawing poor Miss Bacon out of her delusions, which were the condition on which she lived in comfort and joy, and in the exercise of great intellectual power. So I left her to dream as she pleased about the treasures of Shakspeare's tombstone, and to form whatever designs might seem good to herself for obtaining possession of them. I was sensible of a lady like feeling of propriety in Miss Bacon, and a New- England orderliness in her character, and, in spite of her bewilderment, a sturdy common-sense, which I trusted \vould begin to operate at the right time, and keep her from any actual extravagance. And as regarded this matter of the tombstone, so it proved. The interview lasted above an hour, during which she flowed out freely, as to the sole auditor, capable of any degree of intelligent sympathy, whom she had met with in a very long while. Her conversation was remarkably suggestive, alluring forth one's own ideas and fantasies from the shy places where they usually haunt. She \\ as indeed an admirable talker, considering how long she had held her tongue for lack of a listener, — pleasant, sunny and shadowy, often piquant, and giving glimpses of all a woman's various and readily changeable moods a -id humors ; and beneath them all there ran a deep and powerful under-current of earnestness, which did not fail to produce in the listener's mind something like a tem porary faith in what she herself believed so fervently. RECOI LECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 129 Bat the streets of London are not favorable to enthusi asm? of this kind, nor, in fact, are they likely to flourish anywhere in the English atmosphere ; so that, long be fore reaching Paternoster Row, I felt that it would be a difficult and doubtful matter to advocate the publication of Miss Bacon's book. Nevertheless, it did finally get published. Months before that happened, however, Miss Bacon had taken up her residence at Stratford-on-Avon, drawn thither by the magnetism of those rich secrets which she supposed to have been hidden by Raleigh, or Bacon, or I know not whom, in Shakspeare's grave, and protected thcie by a curse, as pirates used to bury their gold in the guardianship of a fiend. She took a humble lodging and began to haunt the churcn like a ghost. But she did not condescend to any stratagem or underhand at tempt to violate the grave, which, had she been capable of admitting such an idea, might possibly have been ac complished by the aid of a resurrection-man. As her first step, she made acquaintance with the clerk, and be gan to sound him as to the feasibility of her enterprise and his own willingness to engage in it. The clerk ap parently listened with not unfavorable ears ; but, as his situation (which the fees of pilgrims, more numerous than at any Catholic shrine, render lucrative) would have been forfeited by any malfeasance in office, he stipulated for liberty to consult the vicar. Miss Bacon requested to tell her own story to the reverend gentle man, and seems to have been received by him with the utmost kindness, and even to have succeeded in making a certain impression on his mind as to the desirability of the search. As their interview had been under the seal 9 130 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. of secrecy, he asked permission to consult a friend, who, aa Miss Bacon either found out or surmised, was a prac titioner of the law. What the legal friend advised she did not learn ; but the negotiation continued, and cer tainly was never broken off by an absolute refusal on the vicar's part. He, perhaps, was kindly temporizing with our poor countrywoman, whom an Englishman of ordi nary mould woul'd have sent to a lunatic asylum at once. I cannot help fancying, however, that her fa miliarity with the events of Shakspeare's life, and of his death and burial, (of which she would speak as if she had been present at the edge of the grave,) and all the history, literature, and personalities of the Elizabethan age, together with the prevailing power of her own belief, and the eloquence with which she knew how to enforce it, had really gone some little way toward making a con vert of the good clergyman. If so, I honor him above all the hierarchy of England. The affair certainly looked very hopeful. However erroneously, Miss Bacon had understood from the vicar that no obstacles would be interposed to the investiga tion, and that he himself would sanction it with his pres ence. It was to take place after nightfall ; and all pre liminary arrangements being made, the vicar and clerk professed to wait only her word in order to set abou ifting the awful stone from the sepulchre. So, at least Miss Bacon believed ; and as her bewilderment was en tirely in her own thoughts, and never disturbed her per ception or accurate remembrance of external things, I see no reason to doubt it, except it be the tinge of ab surdity in the fact. But, in this apparently prosperous state of things, her own convictions began to faltei. A RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 131 doubt stole into her mind whether she might not ha\e mistaken the depository and mode of concealment of those historic treasures; and after once admitting the doubt, she was afraid to hazard the shock of uplifting the stone and finding nothing. She examined the surface of the gravestone, and endeavored, without stirring it, to estimate whether it were of such thick ness as to be capable of containing the archives of the Elizabethan club. She went over anew the proofs, the clues, the enigmas, the pregnant sentences, which she had discovered in Bacon's letters and elsewhere, and now was frightened to perceive that they did not point so definitely to Shakspeare's tomb as she had hereto fore supposed. There was an unmistakably distinct ref erence to a tomb, but it might be Bacon's, or Raleigh's, or Spenser's ; and instead of the " Old Player," as she profanely called him, it might be either of those three illustrious dead, poet, warrior, or statesman, whose ashes, in Westminster Abbey, or the Tower burial- ground, or wherever they sleep, it was her mission to dis turb. It is very possible, moreover, that her acute mind may always have had a lurking and deeply latent dis trust of its own fantasies, and that this now became strong enough to restrain her from a decisive step. But she continued to hover around the church, and seems to have had full freedom of entrance in the day time, and special license, on one occasion at least, at a late hour of the night. She went thither with a dark- lantern, which could but twinkle like a glow-worm through the volume of obscurity that filled the great dusky edifice. Groping her way up the aisle and tow ards the chancel, she sat down on the elevated part of 132 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. the pavement above Shakspeare's grave. If the divine poet really wrote the inscription there, and cared as much about the quiet of his bones as its deprecatory earnest ness would imply, it was time for those crumbling relics to bestir themselves under her sacrilegious feet. But they were safe. She made no attempt to disturb them ; though, I believe, she looked narrowly into the crevices between Shakspeare's and the two adjacent stones, and in .some way satisfied herself that her single strength would suffice to lift the former, in case of need. She threw the feeble ray of her lantern up towards the bust, but could not make it visible beneath the darkness of the vaulted roof. Had she been subject to superstitious terrors, it is impossible to conceive of a situation that could better entitle her to feel them, for, if Shakspeare's ghost would rise at any provocation, it must have shown itself then ; but it is my sincere belief, that, if his figure had ap peared within the scope of her dark-lantern, in his slashed doublet and gown, and with his eyes bent on her beneath the high, bald forehead, just as we see him in the bust, she would have met him fearlessly and controverted his claims to the authorship of the plays, to his very face. She had taught herself to contemn " Lord Leicester's groom " (it was one of her disdainful epithets for the world's incomparable poet) so thoroughly, that even his disembodied spirit would hardly have found civil treat ment at Miss Bacon's hands. Her vigil, though it appears to have had no definite object, continued far into the night. Several times she heard a low movement in the aisles :' a stealthy, dubious foot-fall prowling about in the darkness, now here, now there, among ,he pillars and ancient tombs, as if some RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 133 restless inhabitant of the latter had crept forth to peep at the intruder. By-and-by the clerk made his appear ance, and confessed that he had been watching her ever since she entered the church. About this time it was that a strange sort of weariness seems to have fallen upon her : her toil was all but done, her great purpose, as she believed, on the very point of accomplishment, when she began to regret that so stu pendous a mission had been imposed on the fragility of a woman. Her faith in the new philosophy was as mighty as ever, and so was her confidence in her own adequate development of it, now about to be given to the world ; yet she wished, or fancied so, that it might never have been her duty to achieve this unparalleled task, and to stagger feebly forward under her immense burden of re sponsibility and renown. So far as her personal concern in the matter went, she would gladly have forfeited the reward of her patient study and labor for so many years, her exile from her country and estrangement from her family and friends, her sacrifice of health and all other interests to this one pursuit, if she could only find her self free to dwell in Stratford and be forgotten. She liked the old slumberous town, and awarded the only praise that ever I knew her to bestow on Shakspeare, the individual man, by acknowledging that his taste in a resi dence was good, and that he knew how to choose a suit able retirement for a person of shy, but genial tempera ment. And at this point, I cease to possess the meara of tracing her vicissitudes of feeling any farther. In consequence of some advice which I fancied it my duty to tender, as being the only confidant whom she now had in the world, I fell under Miss Bacon's most severe and 134: RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. passionate displeasure, and was cast off by her in the twinkling of an eye. It was a misfortune to which her friends were always particularly liable ; but I think that none of them ever loved, or even respected, her most ingenuous and noble, but likewise most sensitive and tumultuous character, the less for it. At that time her book was passing through the press. Without prejudice to her literary ability, it must be allowed that Miss Bacon was wholly unfit to prepare her own work for publication, because, among many other reasons, she was too thoroughly in earnest to know what to leave out. Every leaf and line was sacred, for all had been written under so deep a conviction of truth as to assume, in her eyes, the aspect of inspiration. A prac tised book-maker, with entire control of her materials, would have shaped out a duodecimo volume full of elo quent and ingenious dissertation, — criticisms which quite take the color and pungency out of other people's critical remarks on Shakspeare, — philosophic truths which she imagined herself to have found at the roots of his concep tions, and which certainly come from no inconsiderable depth somewhere. There was a great amount of rubbish, which any competent editor would have shovelled out of the way. But Miss Bacon thrust the whole bulk of in spiration and nonsense into the press in a lump, and there tumbled out a ponderous octavo volume, which fell with a dead thump at the feet of the public, and has never l>een picked up. A few persons turned over one or two of the leaves, as it lay there, and essayed to kick the vol ume deeper into the mud ; for they were the hack critics of the minor periodical press in London, than whom, I suppose, though excellent fellows in their way, there are RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 135 no gentlemen in the world less sensible of any sanctity in a book, or less likely to recognize an author's heart in it, or more utterly careless about bruising, if they do recog< nize it. It is their trade. They could not do otherwise. I never thought of blaming them. It was not for such an Englishman as one of these to get beyond the idea that an assault was meditated on England's greatest poet. From the scholars and critics of her own country, indeed, Miss Bacon might have looked for a worthier apprecia tion, because many of the best of them have higher culti vation, and finer and deeper literary sensibilities than all but the very profoundest and brightest of Englishmen. But they are not a courageous body of men ; they dare not think a truth that has an odor of absurdity, lest they should feel themselves bound to speak it out. If any American ever wrote a word in her behalf, Miss Bacon never knew it, nor did I. Our journalists at once repub- lished some of the most brutal vituperations of the Eng lish press, thus pelting their poor countrywoman with stolen mud, without even waiting to know whether the ignominy was deserved. And they never have known it, to this day, nor ever will. The next intelligence that I had of Miss Bacon was by a letter from the mayor of Stratford-on-Avon. He was a medical man, and wrote both in his official and professional character, telling me that an American lady, who had recently published what the mayor called a *' Shakspeare book," was afflicted with insanity. In a lucid interval she had referred to me, as a person who had some knowledge of her family and affairs. What she may have suffered before her intellect gave way, we had better not try to imagine. No author had ever i36 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. hoped so confidently as she ; none ever failed more ut terly. A superstitious fancy might suggest that the anathema on Shakspeare's tombstone had fallen heavily on her head in requital of even the unaccomplished pur pose of disturbing the dust beneath, and that the " Old Player" had kept so quietly in his grave, on the night of her vigil, because he foresaw how soon and terribly he would be avenged. But if that benign spirit takes any care or cognizance of such things now, he has surely re quited the injustice that she sought to do him — the high justice that she really did — by a tenderness of love and pity of which only he could be capable. What matters it, though she called him by some other name ? He had wrougK a greater miracle on her than on all the world besides. This bewildered enthusiast had recognized a depth in the man whom she decried, which scholars, critics, and learned societies, devoted to the elucidation of his unrivalled scenes, had never imagined to exist there. She had paid him the loftiest honor that all these ages of renown have been able to accumulate upon his memory. And when, not many months after the out ward failure of her lifelong object, she passed into the better world, I know not why we should hesitate to be lieve that the immortal poet may have met her on the threshold and led her in, reassuring her with friendly and comfortable words, and thanking her (yet with a smile of gentle humor in his eyes at the thought of certain mistaken speculations) for having interpreted him to mankind so well. I believe that it has been the fate of this remarkable book never to have had more than a single reader. I myself am acquainted with it only in insulated chapters RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 137 and scattered pagp& and paragraphs. But, since my re turn to America, a young man of genius and enthusiasm has assured me that he has positively read the book from beginning to end, and is completely a convert to its doc trines. It belongs to him, therefore, and not to me, — whom, in almost the last letter that I received from her she declared unworthy to meddle with her work, — it belongs surely to this one individual, who has done her so much justice as to know what she wrote, to place Miss Bacon in her due position before the public and posterity. This has been too sad a- story. To lighten the recol lection of it, I will think of my stroll homeward past Charlecote Park, where I beheld the most stately elms, singly, in clumps, and in groves, scattered all about in the sunniest, shadiest, sleepiest fashion ; so that I could not but believe in a lengthened, loitering, drowsy enjoy, ment which these trees must have in their existence. Diffused over slow-paced centuries, it need not be keen nor bubble into thrills and ecstasies, like the momentary delights of short-lived human beings. They were civil ized trees, known to man and befriended by him for ages past. There is an indescribable difference — as I believe I have heretofore endeavored to express — between the tamed, but by no means effete (on the contrary, the richer and more luxuriant) Nature of England, and the rude, shaggy, barbarous Nature which offers us its raciei companionship in America. No less a change has been wrought among the wildest creatures that inhabit what the English call their forests. By-and-by, among those refined and venerable trees, I saw a large herd of deer, mostly reclining, but some standing in picturesque groups, while the stags threw their large antlers aloft, as if the} 138 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. had been taught to make themselves tributary to the scenic effect. Some were running fleetly about, vanish ing from light into shadow and glancing forth again, with here and there a little fawn careering at its mother's heels. These deer are almost in the same relation to the wild, natural state of their kind that the trees of an English park hold to the rugged growth of an American forest. They have held a certain intercourse with man for immemorial years ; and, most probably, the stag that Shakspeare killed was one of the progenitors of this very nerd, and may himself have been a partly civilized and humanized deer, though in a less degree than these re mote posterity. They are a little wilder than sheep, bvit they do not snuff the air at the approach of human beings, nor evince much alarm at their pretty close proximity; although if you continue to advance, they toss their heads and take to their heels in a kind of mimic terror, or something akin to feminine skittishness, with a dim remembrance or tradition, as it were, of their having come of a wild stock. They have so long been fed and protected by man, that they must have lost many of their native instincts, and, I suppose, could not live comfortably through even an English winter without human help. One is sensible of a gentle scorn at them for such dependency, but feels none the less kindly dis posed towards the half-domesticated race ; and it may have been his observation of these tamer characteristics in the Charlecote herd that suggested to Shakspeare the tender and pitiful description of a wounded stag, in " As You Like It." At a distance of some hundreds of yards from Charle cote Hall, and almost hidden by the trees between it and RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 139 the roadside, is an old brick archway and porter's lodge. In connection with this entrance there appears to have been a wall and an ancient moat, the latter of which is still visible, a shallow, grassy scoop along the base of an embankment of the lawn. About fifty yards within the gateway stands the house, forming three sides of a square with three gables in a row on the front, and on each of the two wings ; and there are several towers and turrets at the angles, together with projecting windows, antique balconies, and other quaint ornaments suitable to the half- Gothic taste in which the edifice was built. Over the gateway is the Lucy coat-of-arms, emblazoned in its proper colors. The mansion dates from the early days of Elizabeth, and probably looked very much the same as now when Shakspeare was brought before Sir Thomas Lucy for outrages among his deer. The impression is not that of gray antiquity, but of stable and time-honored gentility, still as vital as ever. It is a most delightful place. All about the house and domain there is a perfection of comfort and domestic taste, an amplitude of convenience, which could have been brought about only by the slow ingenuity and labor of many successive generations, intent upon adding all possible improvement to the home where years gone by and years to come give a sort of permanence to the in tangible present. An American is sometimes tempted to fancy that only by this long process can real homes be produced. One man's lifetime is not enough for the ac complishment of such a work of Art and Nature, almost the greatest merely temporary one that is confided to him; too little, at any rate, — yet perhaps too long when he is discouraged by the idea that he must make 140 RKCOLLECTIOXS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. his house warm and delightful for a miscellaneous race of successors, of whom the one thing certain is, that his own grandchildren will not be among them. Such re- pinings as are here suggested, however, come only from the fact, that, bred in English habits of thought, as most of us are, we have not yet modified our instincts to the lecessities of our new forms of life. A lodging in a wig warn or under a tent has really as many advantages, when we come to know them, as a home beneath the roof-tree of Charlecote Hall. But, alas ! our philosophers have not yet taught us what is best, nor have our poets sung us what is beautifullest, in the kind of life that we must lead ; and therefore we still read the old English wisdom, and harp upon the ancient strings. And thence it happens, that, when we look at a time-honored hall, it seems more possible for men who inherit such a home, than for ourselves, to lead noble and graceful lives, quietly doing good and lovely things as their daily work, and achieving deeds of simple greatness when circumstances require them. I sometimes apprehend that our institutions may perish before we shall have discovered the most precious of the possibilities which they involve. LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. AFTER my first visit to Leamington Spa, I went by an indirect route to Lichfield, and put up at the Black Swan. Had I known where to find it, I would much rather have established myself at the inn formerly kept by the worthy Mr. Boniface, so famous for his ale in Farquhar's time. The Black Swan is an old-fashioned hotel, its street-front being penetrated by an arched pas sage, in either side of which is an entrance-door to the different parts of the house, and through which, and over the large stones of its pavement, all vehicles and horse men rumble and clatter into an enclosed court-yard, with a thunderous uproar among the contiguous rooms and chambers. I appeared to be the only guest of the spa cious establishment, but may have had a few fellow-lodgers hidden in their separate parlors, and utterly eschewing that community of interests which is the characteristic feature of life in an American hotel. At any rate, I had the great, dull, dingy, and dreary coffee-room, with its heavy old mahogany chairs and tables, all to myself, an not a soul to exchange a word with, except the waiter, who, like most of his class in England, had evidently left his conversational abilities uncultivated. No former practice of solitary living, nor habits of reticence, nor well-tested self-dependence for occupation of mind and 112 LICH FIELD AND UTTOXETER. amusement, can quite avail, as I now proved, to dissipate the ponderous gloom of an English coffee-room under such circumstances as these, with no book at hand save the county-directory, nor any newspaper but a torn local journal of five days ago. So I buried myself, betimes, in a huge heap of ancient feathers, (there is no other kind of bed in these old inns,) let my head sink into an unsub stantial pillow, and slept a stifled sleep, infested with such a fragmentary confusion of dreams that I took them to be a medley, compounded of the night-troubles of all ruy predecessors in that same unrestful couch. And when 1 awoke, the musty odor of a by-gone century was in my nostrils — a faint, elusive smell, of which I never had any conception before crossing the Atlantic. In the morning, after a mutton-chop and a cup of chic- cory in the dusky coffee-room, I went forth and bewildered myself a little while among the crooked streets, in quest of one or two objects that had chiefly attracted me to the spot. The city is of very ancient date, and its name in the old Saxon tongue, has a dismal import that would apply well, in these days and forever henceforward, to many an unhappy locality in our native land. Lichfield signifies "The Field of the Dead Bodies" — an epithet, however, which the town did not assume in remembrance of a battle, but which probably sprung up by a natural process, like a sprig of rue or other funereal weed, out of the graves of two princely brethers, sons of a pagan king of Mercia, who were converted by Saint Chad, and after wards martyred for their Christian faith. Nevertheless, I was but little interested in the legends of the remote antiquity of Lichfield, being drawn thither partly to see its beautiful cathedral, and still more, I believe, because L1CHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 143 it was the birthplace of Dr. Johnson, with whose sturdy English character I became acquainted, at a very early period of my life, through the good offices of Mr. Boswell. In truth, he seems as familiar to my recollection, and almost as vivid in his personal aspect to my mind's eye, as the kindly figure of my own grandfather. It is only a solitary child — left much to such wild modes of cul ture as he chooses for himself while yet ignorant what culture means, standing on tiptoe to pull down books from no very lofty shelf, and then shutting himself up, as it were, between the leaves, going astray through the volume at his own pleasure,1 and comprehending it rather by his sensibilities and affections than his intellect — that child is the only student that ever gets the sort of inti macy which I am now thinking of, with a literary per sonage. I do not remember, indeed, ever caring much about any of the stalwart Doctor's grandiloquent produc tions, except his two stern and masculine poems, " Lon don," and " The Vanity of Human Wishes " ; it was as a man, a talker, and a humorist, that I knew and loved him, appreciating many of his qualities perhaps more thoroughly than I do now, though never seeking to put my instinctive perception of his character into language. Beyond all question, I might have had a wiser friend than he. The atmosphere in which alone he breathed was dense ; his awful dread of death showed how much muddy imperfection was to be cleansed out of him, before he could be capable of spiritual existence ; ho meddled only with the surface of life, and never cared to penetrate farther than to ploughshare depth ; his very sense and sagacity were but a one-eyed clear-sighted ness. I laughed at him, sometimes, standing beside hia 144 LICHFIELD AXD UTTOXETER. knee. And yet, considering that my native propensities were towards Fairy Land, and also how much yeast is generally mixed up with the mental sustenance of a New Englander, it may not have been altogether amiss, in those childish and boyish days, to keep pace with this heavy-footed traveller and feed on the gross diet that he carried in his knapsack. It is wholesome food even now. And, then, how English ! Many of the latent sympathies that enabled me to enjoy the Old Country so well, and that so readily amalgamated themselves with the Amer ican ideas that seemed most adverse to them, may have been derived from, or fostered and kept alive by, the great English moralist. Never was a descriptive epithet more nicely appropriate than that ! Dr. Johnson's mor ality was as English an article as a beefsteak. The city of Lichfield (only the cathedral-towns are called cities, in England) stands on an ascending site. It has not so many old gabled houses as Coventry, for example, but still enough to gratify an American appetite for the antiquities of domestic architecture. The people, too, have an old-fashioned way with them, and stare at the passing visitor, as if the railway had not yet quite ac customed them to the novelty of strange faces moving along their ancient sidewalks. The old women whom I met, in several instances, dropt me a courtesy ; and as they were of decent and comfortable exterior, and kept quietly on their way without pause or further greeting, it cer tainly was not allowable to interpret their little act of respect as a modest method of asking for sixpence ; so that I had the pleasure of considering it a remnant of the reverential and hospitable manners of elder times, when the rare presence of a stranger might be deemed worth LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETKR. Ii5 a general acknowledgment. Positively, • coming from such humble sources, I took it all the more as a welcome on behalf of the inhabitants, and would not have ex changed it for an invitation from the mayor and magis trates to a public dinner. Yet I wish, merely for the experiment's sake, that I could have emboldened myself to hold out the aforesaid sixpence to at least one of the old ladies. In my wanderings about town, I came to an artificial piece of water, called the Minster Pool. It fills the im mense cavity in a ledge of rock, whence the building materials of the cathedral were quarried out a great many centuries ago. I should never have guessed the little lake to be of man's creation, so very pretty and quietly picturesque an object has it grown to be, with its green banks, and the old trees hanging over its glassy surface, in which you may see reflected some of the bat tlements of the majestic structure that once lay here in unshaped stone. Some little children stood on the edge of the Pool, angling with pin-hooks ; and the scene re minded me (though really to be quite fair with the reader, the gist of the analogy has now escaped me,) of that mysterious lake in the Arabian Nights, which had once been a palace and a city, and where a fisherman used to pull out the former inhabitants in the guise of enchanted fishes. There is no need of fanciful associa tions to make the spot interesting. It was in the porch of one of the houses, in the street that runs beside the Minster Pool, that Lord Brooke was slain, in the time of the Parliamentary war, by a shot from the battle ments of the cathedral, which was then held by the Royalists as a fortress. The incident is commemorated 10 U6 LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. by an inscription on a stone, inlaid into the wall of the Louse. I know not what rank the Cathedral of Lichfield holds among its sister edifices in England, as a piece ot magnificent architecture. Except that of Chester, (the grim and simple nave of which stands yet unrivalled in my memory,) and one or two small ones in North Wales, hardly worthy of the name of cathedrals, it was the first that I had seen. To my uninstructed vision, it seemed the object best worth gazing at in the whole world ; and now, after beholding a great many more, I remember it with less prodigal admiration only because others are as magnificent as itself. The traces remaining in my memory represent it as airy rather than massive. A multitude of beautiful shapes appeared to be compre liended within its single outline ; it was a kind of kalei doscopic mystery, so rich a variety of aspects did it assume from each altered point of view, through tho presentation of a different face, and the rearrangement of its peaks and pinnacles and the three battlemented towers, with the spires that shot heavenward from all three, but one loftier than its fellows. Thus it im pressed you, at every change, as a newly created struc ture of the passing moment, in which yet you lovingly recognized the half-vanished structure of the instant before, and felt, moreover, a joyful faith in the inde structible existence of all this cloudlike vicissitude. A Gothic cathedral is surely the most wonderful work which mortal man has yet achieved, so vast, so intricate, and so profoundly simple, with such strange, delightful recesses in its grand figure, so difficult to comprehend within one idea, and yet all so consonant that it ulti- LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 147 mately draws the beholder and his universe into its har mony. It is the only thing in the world that is vast enough and rich enough. Not that I felt, or was worthy to feel, an unmingled enjoyment in gazing at this wonder. I could not elevate myself to its spiritual height, any more than I cduld have climbed from the ground to the summit of one of its pin nacles. Ascending but a little way, I continually fell back and lay in a kind of despair, conscious that a flood of uncomprehended beauty was pouring down upon me, of which I could appropriate only the minutest portion. After a hundred years, incalculably as my higher sympa thies might be invigorated by so divine an employment, I should still be a gazer from below and at an awful distance, as yet remotely excluded from the interior mystery. But it was something gained, even to have that painful sense of my own limitations, ancl that half- smothered yearning to soar beyond them. The cathedral showed me how earthly I was, but yet whispered deeply of immortality. After all, this was probably the best lesson that it could bestow, and, taking it as thoroughly as possible home to my heart, I was fain to be content. If the truth must be told, my ill-trained enthusiasm soon flagged, and I began to lose the vision of a spiritual or ideal edifice behind the time-worn and weather-stained front of the actual structure. Whenever that is the case, it is most reverential to look another way ; but the mood disposes one to minute investigation, and I took advan tage of it to examine the intricate and multitudinous adorn ment that was lavished on the exterior wall of this great church. Everywhere, there were empty niches where statues had been thrown down, and here ancl there a 148 LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. statue still lingered in its niche ; and over the chief en« trance, and extending across the whole breadth of the building, was a row of angels, sainted personages, martyrs, and kings, sculptured in reddish stone. Being much cor roded by the moist English atmosphere, during four or fivo hundred winters that they had stood there, these benign and majestic figures perversely put me in mind of the appearance of a sugar image, after a child has been holding it in his mouth. The venerable infant Time has evidently found them sweet morsels. Inside of the minster there is a long and lofty nave, transepts of the same height, and side-aisles and chapels, dim nooks of holiness, where in catholic times the lamps were continually burning before the richly decorated shrines of saints. In the audacity of my ignorance, as I humbly acknowledge it to have been, I criticised this great interior as too much broken into compartments, and shorn of half its rightful impressiveness by the interposi tion of a screen betwixt the nave and chancel. It did not spread itself in breadth but ascended to the roof in lofty narrowness. One large body of worshippers might have knelt down in the nave, others in each of the transepts, and smaller ones in the side-aisles, besides an indefinite number of esoteric enthusiasts in the mysterious sanctities beyond the screen. Thus it seemed to typify the exclu- siveness of sects rather than the world-wide hospitality of genuine religion. I had imagined a cathedral with a scope more vast. These Gothic aisles, with their groined arches overhead, supported by clustered pillars in long vistas up and down, were venerable and magnificent, but included too much of the twilight of that monkish gloom out of which they grew. It is no matter whether I ever came LICHFIEuD AXD UTTOXETER. 149 to a more satisfactory appreciation of this kind of archi tecture ; the only value of ray strictures being to show the folly of looking at noble objects in the wrong mood, and the absurdity of a new visitant pretending to hold any opinion whatever oh such subjects, instead of sur rendering himself to the old builder's influence with •liildlike simplicity. A great deal of white marble decorates the old stone work of the aisles, in the shape of altars, obelisks, sar cophagi, and busts. Most of these memorials are com memorative of people locally distinguished, especially the deans and canons of the cathedral, with their relatives and families ; and I found but two monuments of per sonages whom I had ever heard of, — one being Gilbert Walmesley, and the other Lady Mary Wortley Mon tague, a literary acquaintance of my boyhood. It was really pleasant to meet her there ; for after a friend has lain in the grave far into the second century, she would be unreasonable to require any melancholy emotions in a chance interview at her tombstone. It adds a rich charm to sacred edifices, this time-honored custom of burial in churches, after a few years, at least, when the mortal remains have turned to dust beneath the pave ment, and the quaint devices and inscriptions still speak to you above. The statues, that stood or reclined in several recesses of the Cathedral, had a kind of life, and I regarded them with an odd sort of deference, as if they were privileged denizens of the precinct. It was singular, too, how the memorial of the latest buried per son, the man whose features were familiar in the streets of Lichfield only yesterday, seemed precisely as much at home here as his mediaeval predecessors. Henceforward 150 LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. ho belonged to the cathedral like one of its original pillar? Methought this impression in ray fancy might be the shadow of a spiritual fact. The dying melt into the great multitude of the Departed as quietly as a drop of water into the ocean, and, it may be, are conscious of no unfamiliarity with their new circumstances, but immedi ately become aware of an insufferable strangeness in the world which they have quitted. Death has not taken them away, but brought them home. The vicissitudes and mischances of sublunary affairs, however, have not ceased to attend upon these marble inhabitants; for I saw the upper fragment of a sculp tured lady, in a very old-fashioned garb, the lower half of whom had doubtless been demolished by Cromwell's soldiers when they took the Minster by storm. And there lies the remnant of this devout lady on her slab, ever since the outrage, as for centuries before, with a countenance of divine serenity and her hands clasped in prayer, symbolizing a depth of religious faith which no earthly turmoil or calamity could disturb. Another piece of sculpture (apparently a favorite subject in the middle ages, for I have seen several like it in other Ca thedrals), was a reclining skeleton, as faithfully repre senting an open-work of bones as could well be ex pected in a solid block of marble, and at a period, more over, when the mysteries of the human frame were rather to be guessed at than revealed. Whatever the anatomical defects of his production, the old sculptor had succeeded in making it ghastly beyond measure. How much mischief has been wrought upon us by this in variable gloom of the Gothic imagination ; flinging itself like a death-scented pall over our conceptions of the LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 151 future state, smothering our hopes, hiding our sky, and inducing dismal efforts to raise the harvest of immor tality out of what is most opposite to it, — the grave! The Cathedral service is performed twice every day : at ten o'clock and at four. When I first entered, the choristers (young and old, but mostly, I think, boys, with voices inexpressibly sweet and clear, and as fresh as bird- notes) were just winding up their harmonious labors, and soon came thronging through a side-door from the chan cel into the nave. They were all dressed in long, white robes, and looked like a peculiar order of beings, created on purpose to hover between the roof and pavement of that dim, consecrated edifice, and illuminate it with divine melodies, reposing themselves, meanwhile, on the heavy grandeur of the organ-tones like cherubs on a golden cloud. All at once, however, one of the cherubic multitude pulled off his white gown, thus transforming himself before my very eyes into a commonplace youth of the day, in modern frock-coat and trousers of a de cidedly provincial cut. This absurd little incident, I verily believe, had a sinister effect in putting me at odds with the proper influences of the Cathedral, nor could I quite recover a suitable frame of mind during my stay there. But, emerging into the open air, I began to be sensible that I had left a magnificent interior behind me, and I have never quite lost the perception and enjoyment of it in these intervening years. A large space in the immediate neighborhood of the Cathedral is called the Close, and comprises beautifully kept lawns and a shadowy walk, bordered by the dwell ings of the ecclesiastical dignitaries of the diocese. All this row of episcopal, canonical, and clerical residences, 152 LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. has an air of the deepest quiet, repose, and well-pro tected, though not inaccessible seclusion. They seemed capable of including everything that a saint could desire, and a great many more things than most of us sinners generally succeed in acquiring. Their most marked fea ture is a dignified comfort, looking as if no disturbance or vulgar intrusiveness could ever cross their thresholds, encroach upon their ornamented lawns, or straggle into me beautiful gardens that surround them with flower- oeds and rich clumps of shrubbery. The episcopal palace is a stately mansion of stone, built somewhat in the Italian style, and bearing on its front the figures 1687, as the date of its erection. A large edifice of brick, which, if I remember, stood next to the palace, I took to be the residence of the second dignitary of the Cathedral ; and, in that case, it must have been the youthful home of Addison, whose father was Dean of Lichfield. I tried to fancy his figure on the delightful walk that extends in front of those priestly abodes, from which and the interior lawns it is separated by an open work iron fence, lined with rich old shrubbery, and over arched by a minster-aisle of venerable trtes. This path is haunted by the shades of famous personages who have formerly trodden it. Johnson must have teen familiar with it, both as a boy, and in his subsequent visits to Lich field, an illustrious old man. Miss Seward, connected with so many literary reminiscences, lived in one of the adjacent houses. Tradition says that it was a favorite spot of Major Andre, who used to pace to and fro under these trees, waiting, perhaps, to catch a last angel-glimpse of Honoria Sneyd, before he crossed the ocean to en counter his dismal doom from an American court-martial LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 153 David Garrick, no doubt, scampered along the palh in his boyish days, and, if he was an early student of the drama, must often have thought of those two airy char acters of the " Beaux' Stratagem," Archer and Aimwell, who, on this very ground, after attending service at tho Cathedral, contrive to make acquaintance with the ladies of the comedy. These creatures of mere fiction have a.* positive a substance now as the sturdy old figure of John son himself. They live, while realities have died. The shadowy walk still glistens with their gold-embroidered memories. Seeking for Johnson's birthplace, I found it in St. Mary's Square, which is not so much a square as the mere widening of a street. The house is tall aad thin, of three stories, with a square front and a roof rising steep and high. On a side-view, the building looks as if it had been cut in two in the midst, there being no slope of the roof on that side. A ladder slanted against the wall, and a painter was giving a livelier hue to the plaster. In a corner-room of the basement, where old Michael Johnson may be supposed to have sold books, is now what we should call a dry-goods store, or, accord ing to the English phrase, a mercer's and haberdasher's shop. The house has a private entrance on a cross- street, the door being accessible by several much worn stone-steps, which are bordered by an iron balustrade. I set my foot on the steps and laid my hand on the balus trade, where Johnson's hand and foot must many a time have been, and ascending to the door, I knocked once, and again, and again, and got no admittance. Going round to the shop-entrance, I tried to open it, but found it as fast bolted as the gate of Paradise. It is mortify- 154 LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. ing to be so balked in one's little enthusiasms ; but look ing round in quest of somebody to make inquiries of, 1 was a good deal consoled by the sight of Dr. Johnson himself, who happened, just at that moment, to be sitting at his ease nearly in the middle of St. Mary's Square, with his face turned towards his father's house. Of course, it being almost fourscore years since the doctor laid aside his weary bulk of flesh, together with the ponderous melancholy that had so long weighed him down, — the intelligent reader will at once comprehend that he was marble in his substance, and seated in a marble chair, on an elevated stone-pedestal. In short, it was a statue, sculptured by Lucas, and placed here in 1838, at the expense of Dr. Law, the reverend chancel lor of the Diocese. The figure is colossal (though perhaps not much more so than the mountainous doctor himself) and looks down upon the spectator from its pedestal of ten or twelve feet high, with a broad and heavy benignity of aspect, very like in feature to Sir Joshua Reynolds's portrait of John son, but calmer and sweeter in expression. Several big books are piled up beneath his chair, and, if I mistake not, he holds a volume in his hand, thus blinking forth at the world out of his learned abstraction, owl-like, yet benevolent at heart. The statue is immensely massive, vast ponderosity of stone, not finely spiritualized, nor, indeed, fully humanized, but rather resembling a great gtone-boulder than a man. You must look with the eyes of faith and sympathy, or possibly, you might lose the human being altogether, and find only a big stone within your mental grasp. On the pedestal are three bas-reliefs. In the first, Johnson is represented as hardly more than LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 155 a baby, bestriding an old man's shoulders, resting his chin on the bald head which he embraces with his little arms, and listening earnestly to the high-church eloquence of Dr. Sacheverell. In the second tablet, he is seen rid ing to school on the shoulders of two of his comrades, while another boy supports him in the rear. The third bas-relief possesses, to my mind, a great deal of pathos, to which my appreciative faculty is probably the more alive, because I have always been profoundly impressed by the incident here commemorated, and long ago tried to tell it for the behoof of childish readers. It shows Johnson in the market-place of Uttoxeter, doing penance for an act of disobedience to his father, com mitted fifty years before. He stands bare-headed, a venerable figure, and a countenance extremely sad and woe-begone, with the wind and rain driving hard against him, and thus helping to suggest to the spectator the gloom of his inward state. Some market-people and children gaze awe-stricken into his face, and an aged man and woman, with clasped and uplifted hands, seem to be praying for him. These latter personages (whose introduction by the artist is none the less effective, be cause, in queer proximity, there are some commodities of market-day in the shape of living ducks and dead poultry,) I interpreted to represent the spirits of John son's father and mother, lending what aid they could t» lighten his half-century's burden of remorse. I had never heard of the above-described piece of sculpture before ; it appears to have no reputation as a work of art, nor am I at all positive that it deserves any. For me, however, it did as much as sculpture could, un der the circumstances, even if the artist of the Libyan 156 LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. Sibyl had wrought it, by reviving my interest in the sturdy old Englishman, and particularly by freshening my perception of a wonderful beauty and pathetic ten derness in the incident of the penance. So, the next day, I left Lichfield for Uttoxeter, on one of the few purely sentimental pilgrimages that I ever undertook, to see the very spot where Johnson had stood. Boswell, I think, speaks of the town (its name is pronounced Yute- oxeter) as being about nine miles off from Lichfield, but the county-map would indicate a greater distance ; and by rail, passing from one line to another, it is as much as eighteen miles. I have always had an idea of old Michael Johnson sending his literary merchandise by carrier's wagon, journeying to Uttoxeter a-foot on mar ket-day morning, selling books through the busy hours, and returning to Lichfield at night. This could not pos sibly have been the case. Arriving at the Uttoxeter station, the first objects that I saw, with a green field or two between them and me, were the tower and gray steeple of a church, rising among red-tiled roofs and a few scattered trees. A very short walk takes you from the station up into the town. It had been my previous impression that the market-place of Uttoxeter lay immediately roundabout the church; and, if I remember the narrative aright, Johnson, or Boswell in his behalf, describes his father's book-stall as standing in the market-place, close beside the sacred edifice. It is impossible for me to say what changes may have occurred in the topography of the town, during almost a century and a half since Michael Johnson retired from business, and ninety years, at least, since his son's penance was performed. But the church LICHF1ELD AND UTTOXETER. 157 has now merely a street of ordinary width passing around it, while the market-place, though near at hand, neither forms a part of it nor is really contiguous, nor would its throng and bustle be apt to overflow their boundaries and surge against the churchyard and the old gray tower. Nevertheless, a walk of a minute or two brings a person from the centre of the market-place to the church-door ; and Michael Johnson might very conveniently have located his stall and laid out his literary ware in the corner at the tower's base ; better there, indeed, than in the busy centre of an agricultural market. But the pic turesque arrangement and full impressiveness of the story absolutely require that Johnson shall not have done his penance in a corner, ever so little retired, but shall have been the very nucleus of the crowd — the midmost man of the market-place — a central image of Memory and Remorse, contrasting with and overpowering the petty materialism around him. He himself, having the force to throw vitality and truth into what persons differently constituted might reckon a mere external ceremony, and an absurd one, could not have failed to see this necessity. I am resolved, therefore, that the true site of Dr. Johnson's penance was in the middle of the market place. That important portion of the town is a rather spacious and irregularly shaped vacuity, surrounded by houses and shops, some of them old, with red-tiled roofs, others wearing a pretence of newness, but probably as old in their inner substance as the rest. The people of Uttox eter seemed very idle in the warm summer-day, and were scattered in little groups along the side-walks, leisurely chatting with one another, and often turning 108 LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. about to take a deliberate stare at my humble self msomuch that I felt as if my genuine sympathy for the illustrious penitent, and my many reflections about him, must have imbued me with some of his own singularity of mien. If their great-grandfathers were such redoubt able starers in the Doctor's day, his penance was no light one. This curiosity indicates a paucity of visitors to tho little town, except for market purposes, and I question if Uttoxeter ever saw an American before. The only other thing that greatly impressed me was the abundance of public-houses, one at every step or two: Red Lions, White Harts, Bulls' Heads, Mitres, Cross Keys, and 1 know not what besides. These are probably for the accommodation of the farmers and peasantry of the neighborhood on market-day, and content themselves with a very meagre business on other days of the week. At any rate, I was the only guest in Uttoxeter at the period of my visit, and had but an infinitesimal portion of patronage to distribute among such a multitude of inns. The reader, however, will possibly be scandalized to learn what was the first, and, indeed, the only impor tant affair that I attended to, after coming so far to indulge a solemn and high emotion, and standing now on the very spot where my pious errand should have been consummated. I stepped into one of the rustic hostle- ries and got my dinner, — bacon and greens, some mutton- chops, juicier and more delectable than all America could serve up at the President's table, and a gooseberry pud ding : a sufficient meal for six yeomen, and good enough for a prince, besides a pitcher of foaming ale, the whole at the pitiful small charge of eighteenpence ! Dr. Johnson would have forgiven me, for nobody had LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 159 a heartier faith in beef and mutton than himself. And as regards my lack of sentiment in eating my dinner, — it was the wisest thing I had done that day. A sensible man had better not let himself be betrayed into these attempts to realize the things which he has dreamed about, and which, when they cease to be purely ideal in his mind, will have lost the truest of their truth, the lofti est and profoundest part of their power over his sym pathies. Facts, as we really find them, whatever poetry they may involve, are covered with a stony excrescence of prose, resembling the crust on a beautiful sea-shell, and they never show their most delicate and divinest colors until we shall have dissolved away their grosser actualities by steeping them long in a powerful men struum of thought. And seeking to actualize them again, we do but renew the crust. If this were other wise — if the moral sublimity of a great fact depended in any degree on its garb of external circumstances, things which change and decay — it could not itself be immortal and ubiquitous, and only a brief point of time and a little neighborhood would be spiritually nourished by its grandeur and beauty. Such were a few of the reflections which I mingled with my ale, as I remember to have seen an old quaffer of that excellent liquor stir up his cup with a sprig of some bitter and fragrant herb. Meanwhile I found my self still haunted by a desire to get a definite result out of my visit to Uttoxeter. The hospitable inn was called the Nag's Head, and standing beside the market-place, was as likely as any other to have entertained old Michael Johnson in the days when he used to come hither to sell books. He, perhaps, had dined on bacon 160 LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. and g7TPns, and drunk his ale, and smoked his pipe, in the very room where I now sat, which was a low, ancient room, c^**tainly much older than Queen "Anne's time, with a red-brick floor, and a white-washed ceiling, trav ersed by bare, rough beams, the whole in the rudest fashion, but extremely neat. Neither did it lack orna ment, the walls being hung with colored engravings of prize oxen and other pretty prints, and the mantel-piece adorned with earthenware figures of shepherdesses in the Arcadian taste of long ago. Michael Johnson's eyes might have rested on that self-same earthen image, to ex amine which more closely I had just crossed the brick pavement of the room. And, sitting down again, still as I sipped my ale, I glanced through the open window into the sunny market-place, and wished that I could hon estly fix on one spot rather than another, as likely to have been the holy site where Johnson stood to do his penance. How strange and stupid it is that tradition should not have marked and kept in mind the very place ! How shameful (nothing less than that) that there should be no local memorial of this incident, as beautiful and touchmg a passage as can be cited out of any human life ! No inscription of it, almost as sacred as a verse of Scripture on the wall of the church ! No statue of the venerable and illustrious penitent in the market-place to throw a wholesome awe over its earthliness, its frauds and petty wrongs of which the benumbed fingers of conscience can make no record, its selfish competition of each man with his brother or his neighbor, its traffic of soul-substance for a little worldly gain ! Such a statue, if the piety of the people did not rai*e H, nuVh* almost have been ex- LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 161 pected to grow up out of the pavement of its own accord on the spot that had been watered by the rain that dripped from Johnson's garments, mingled with his re morseful tears. Long after my visit to Uttoxeter, I was told that there were individuals in the town who could have shown me the exact, indubitable spot where Johnson performed his penance. I was assured, moreover, that sufficient inter est was felt in the subject to have induced certain local discussions as to the expediency of erecting a memorial. With all deference to my polite informant, I surmise that there is a mistake, and decline, without further and pre cise evidence, giving credit to either of the above state ments. The inhabitants know nothing, as a matter of general interest, about the penance, and care nothing for the scene of it. If the clergyman of the parish, for ex ample, had ever heard of it, would he not have used the theme, time and again, wherewith to work tenderly and profoundly on the souls committed to his charge ? - If parents were familiar with it, would they not teach it to their young ones at the fireside, both to insure reverence to their own gray hairs, and to protect the children from such unavailing regrets as Johnson bore upon his heart for fifty years ? If the site were ascertained, would not the pavement thereabouts be worn with reverential foot steps ? Would not every town-born child be able to direct the pilgrim thither? While waiting at the sta tion, before my departure, I asked a boy who stood near me, — an intelligent and gentlemanly lad, twelve or thir teen years old, whom I should take to be a clergyman's son. — I asked him if he had ever heard the story of T>r. Johnson, how he stood an hour doing penance near 11 162 LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. that church, the spire of which rose before us. The boy stared and answered, — «No!" " Were you bora in Uttoxeter ? " " Yes." I inquired if no circumstance such as I had mentioned was known or talked about among the inhabitants. " No," said the boy ; " not that I ever heard of." Just think of the absurd little town, knowing nothing of the only memorable incident which ever happened within its boundaries since the old Britons built it, this Bad and lovely story, which consecrates the spot (for I found it holy to my contemplation, again, as soon as it lay behind me) in the heart of a stranger from three thou sand miles over the sea ! It but confirms what I have been saying, that sublime and beautiful facts are best un derstood when ethereplvwl by PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. WE set out at a little past eleven, and made our first Btage to Manchester. We were by this time sufficiently Anglicized to reckon the morning a bright and sunny one ; although the May sunshine was mingled with water, as it were, and distempered with a very bitter east wind. Lancashire is a dreary county, (all, at least, except its liilly portions,) and I have never passed through it with out wishing myself anywhere but in that particular spot where 1 then happened to be. A few places along our route were historically interesting ; as, for example, Bol- ton, wliich was the scene of many remarkable events in the Parliamentary War, and in the market-square of which one of the Earls of Derby was beheaded. We saw, along the wayside, the never-failing green fields, hedges, and other monotonous features of an ordinary English landscape. There were little factory villages, too, or larger towns, with their tall chimneys, and their pennons of black smoke, their ugliness of brick-work, and their heaps of refuse matter from the furnace, whicl seems to be the only kind of stuff which Nature cannot take back to herself and resolve into the elements, when man has thrown it aside. These hillocks of waste and effete mineral always disfigure the neighborhood of iron mongering towns, and, even after a considerable antiquity, are hardly made decent with a little grass. 164 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. At a quarter to two we left Manchester by the Shef field and Lincoln Railway. The scenery grew rather better than that through which we had hitherto passed, though still by no means very striking; for (except in the show-districts, such as the Lake country, or Derby shire) English scenery is not particularly well worth ooking at, considered as a spectacle or a picture. It has a real, homely charm of its own, no doubt ; and the rich verdure, and the thorough finish added by human art, are perhaps as attractive to an American eye as any stronger feature could be. Our journey, however, between Man chester and Sheffield was not through a rich tract of country, but along a valley walled in by bleak, ridgy hills extending straight as a rampart, and across black moor lands with here and there a plantation of trees. Some times there were long and gradual ascents, bleak, windy, and desolate, conveying the very impression which the reader gets from many passages of Miss Bronte's novels, and still more from those of her two sisters. Old stone or brick farm-houses, and, once in a while, an old church- tower, were visible: but these are almost too common objects to be noticed in an English landscape. On a railway, I suspect, what little we do see of the country is seen quite amiss, because it was never intended to be looked at from any point of view in that straight ine ; so that it is like looking at the wrong side of a piece of tapestry. The old highways and footpaths were as natural as brooks and rivulets, and adapted themselves by an inevitable impulse to the physiognomy of the country ; and, furthermore, every object within view of them had some subtile reference to their curves and un dulations : but the line of a railway is perfectly artificial, PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 165 and puts all precedent things at sixes-and-sevens. At any rate, be the cause what it may, there is seldom any thing worth seeing within the scope of a railway travel ler's eye ; and if there were, it requires an alert marks man to take a flying shot at the picturesque. At one of the stations (it was near a village of ancient aspect, nestling round a church, on a wide Yorkshire moor) I saw a tall old lady in black, who seemed to have just alighted from the train. She caught my atten tion by a singular movement of the head, not once only, but continually repeated, and at regular intervals, as if she were making a stern and solemn protest against some action that developed itself before her eyes, and were foreboding terrible disaster, if it should be persisted in. Of course, it was nothing more than a paralytic or ner vous affection ; yet one might fancy that it had its origin in some unspeakable wrong, perpetrated half a lifetime ago in this old gentlewoman's presence, either against herself or somebody whom she loved still better. Her features had a wonderful sternness, which, I presume, was caused by her habitual effort to compose and keep them quiet, and thereby counteract the tendency to paralytic move ment. The slow, regular, and inexorable character of the motion — her look of force and self-control, which had the appearance of rendering it voluntary, while yet it was so fateful — have stamped this poor lady's face and gesture into my memory; so that, some dark day or other, I am afraid she will reproduce herself in a dis mal romance. The train stopped a minute or two, to allow the tickets to be taken, just before entering the Sheffield station, and thence I had a glimpse of the famous town of razors 106 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. and penknives, enveloped in a cloud of its own diffusing My impressions of it are extremely vague and misty, — or, rather, smoky: for Sheffield seems to me smokier than Manchester, Liverpool, or Birmingham, — smokier than all England besides, unless Newcastle be the ex ception. It might have been Pluto's own metropolis, shrouded in sulphurous vapor; and, indeed, our approach to it had been by the Valley of the Shadow of Death, through a tunnel three miles in length, quite traversing the breadth and depth of a mountainous hill. After passing Sheffield, the scenery became softer, gentler, yet more picturesque. At one point we saw what I believe to be the utmost northern verge of Sher wood Forest, — not consisting, however, of thousand- year oaks, extant from Robin Hood's days, but of young and thriving plantations, which will require a century or two of slow English growth to give them much breadth of shade. Earl Fitzwilliam's property lies in this neigh borhood, and probably his castle was hidden among some soft depth of foliage not far off. Farther onward the country grew quite level around us, whereby I judged that we must now be in Lincolnshire ; and shortly after six o'clock we caught the first glimpse of the Cathedral towers, though they loomed scarcely huge enough for our preconceived idea of them. But, as we drew nearer, the great edifice began to assert itself, making us ac knowledge it to be larger than our receptivity could take in. At the railway-station we found no cab, (it being an unknown vehicle in Lincoln,) but only an omnibus be longing to the Saracen's Head, which the driver recom mended as the best hotel in the city, and took us thither PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 167 accordingly, Tt received us hospitably, and looked com« fortable enough ; though, like the hotels of most old Eng lish towns, it had a musty fragrance of antiquity, such as I have smelt in a seldom-opened London church where the broad-aisle is paved with tombstones. The house was of an ancient fashion, the entrance into its interior court-yard being through an arch, in the side of which ia the door of the hotel. There are long corridors, an in tricate arrangement of passages, and an up-and-down meandering of staircases, amid which it would be no marvel to encounter some forgotten guest who had g< no astray a hundred years ago, and was still seeking for his bedroom while the rest of his generation were in their graves. There is no exaggerating the confusion of mhid that seizes upon a stranger in the bewildering geography of a great old-fashioned English inn. This hotel stands in the principal street of Lincoln, and within a very short distance of one of the ancient city-gates, which is arched across the public way, with a smaller arch for foot-passengers on either side ; the whole, a gray, time-gnawn, ponderous, shadowy struc ture, through the dark vista of which you look into the Middle Ages. The street is narrow, and retains many antique peculiarities ; though, unquestionably, Eng lish domestic architecture has lost its most impressive features, in the course of the last century. In this re spect, there are finer old towns than Lincoln : Chester, for instance, and Shrewsbury, — which last is unusually rich in those quaint and stately edifices where the gentry of the shire used to make their winter-abodes, in a pro vincial metropolis. Almost everywhere, nowadays, there is a monotony of modern brick 01 stuccoed fronts, hid 108 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. ing houses that are older than ever, but obliterating the picturesque antiquity of the street. Between seven and eight o'clock (it being still broad daylight in these long English days) we set out to pay a preliminary visit to the exterior of the Cathedral. Pass ing through the Stone Bow, as the city-gate close by is called, we ascended a street which grew steeper and nar rower as we advanced, till at last it got to be the steepest street I ever climbed, — so steep that any carriage, if left to itself, would rattle downward much faster than it could possibly be drawn up. Being almost the only hill in Lin colnshire, th<3 inhabitants seem disposed to make the most of it. The houses on each side had no very remarkable aspect, except one with a stone portal and carved orna ments, which is now a dwelling-place for poverty stricken people, but may have been an aristocratic abode in the days of the Norman kings, to whom its style of architec ture dates back. This is called the Jewess's House, hav ing been inhabited by a woman of that faith who was hanged six hundred years ago. And still the street grew steeper and steeper. Cer tainly, the Bishop and clergy of Lincoln ought not to be fat men, but of very spiritual, saint-like, almost angelic habit, if it be a frequent part of their ecclesiastical duty to climb this hill ; for it is a real penance, and was prob ably performed as such, and groaned over accordingly, ir monkish times. Formerly, on the day of his installation the Bishop used to ascend the hill barefoot, and was doubtless cheered and invigorated by looking upward to the grandeur that was to console him for the humility of his approach. We, likewise, were beckoned onward by glimpses of the Cathedral towers, and, finally, attaining PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 169 an open square on the summit, we saw an old Gothic gateway to the left hand, and another to the right. Tho latter had apparently been a part of the exterior defences of the Cathedral, at a time when the edifice was fortified The west front rose behind. We passed through one oi the side-arches of the Gothic portal, and found ourselves in the Cathedral Close, a wide, level space, where the great old Minster has fair room to sit, looking down on the ancient structures that surround it, all of which, in former days, were the habitations of its dignitaries and officers. Some of them are still occupied as such, though others are in too neglected and dilapidated a state to seem worthy of so splendid an establishment. Unless it bo Salisbury Close, however, (which is incomparably rich as regards the old residences that belong to it,) I remem ber no more comfortably picturesque precincts round any other cathedral. But, in truth, almost every cathedral close, in turn, has seemed to ine the loveliest, cosiest, safest, least wind-shaken, most decorous, and most en joyable shelter that ever the thrift and selfishness of mortal man contrived for himself. How delightful, ta combine all this with the service of the temple ! Lincoln Cathedral is built of a yellowish brown-stone, which appears either to have been largely restored, or else does not assume the hoary, crumbly surface that gives such a venerable aspect to most of the ancient churches and castles in England. In many parts, the recent restorations are quite evident; but other, and much the larger portions, can scarcely have been touched for centuries : for there are still the gargoyles, perfect, or with broken noses, as the case may be, but showing that variety and fertility of grotesque extravagance which no 170 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. modern imitation can effect. There are innumerable niches, too, up the whole height of the towers, above and around the entrance, and all over the walls : most of them empty, but a few containing the lamentable rem nants of headless saints and angels. It is singular what a native animosity lives in the human heart against carved images, insomuch that, whether they represent Christian saint or Pagan deity, all unsophisticated men seize the first safe opportunity to knock off their heads ! Jn spite of all dilapidations, however, the effect of the west front of the Cathedral is still exceedingly rich, be ing covered from massive base to airy summit with the minutest details of sculpture and carving : at least, it was so once ; and even now the spiritual impression of its beauty remains so strong, that we have to look twice to see that much of it has been obliterated. I have seen a cherry-stone carved all over by a monk, so minutely that it must have cost him half a lifetime of labor ; and this cathedral front seems to have been elaborated in a monkish spirit, like that cherry-stone. Not that the re sult is in the least petty, but miraculously grand, and all the more so for the faithful beauty of the smallest de tails. An elderly man, seeing us looking up at the west front, came to the door of an adjacent house, and called to in quire if we wished to go into the Cathedral ; but as (here would have been a dusky twilight beneath its roof, like the antiquity that has sheltered itself within, we de clined for the present. So we merely walked round the exterior, and thought it more beautiful than that of York ; though, on recollection, I hardly deem it so majes tic and mighty as that. It is vain to attempt a descrip- PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 171 tion, 3r seek even to record the feeling which the edifice inspires. It does not impress the beholder as an inani mate object, but as something that has a vast, quiet, long-enduring life of its own, — a creation which man did not build, though in some way or other it is con nected with him, and kindred to human nature. In short, I fall straightway to talking nonsense, when I try to ex press my inner sense of this and other cathedrals. While we stood in the close, at the eastern end of the Minster, the clock chimed the quarters ; and then Great Tom, who hangs in the Rood Tower, told us it was eight o'clock, in far the sweetest and mightiest accents that I ever heard from any bell, — slow, and solemn, and allow ing the profound reverberations of each stroke to die away before the next one fell. It was still broad day light in that upper region of the town, and would be so for some time longer ; but the • evening atmosphere was getting sharp and cool. We therefore descended the steep street, — our younger companion running before us, and gathering such headway that I fully expected him to break his head against some projecting wall. In the morning we took a fly, (an English term for an exceedingly sluggish vehicle,) and drove up to the Min ster by a road rather less steep and abrupt than the one we had previously climbed. We alighted before the west front, and sent our charioteer in quest of the verger ; but, as he was not immediately to be found, a young girl let us into the nave. We found it very grand, it is needless to say, but not so grand, methought, as the vast nave of York Cathedral, especially beneath the great central tower of the latter. Unless a writer intends a profess edly architectural description, there is but one set of 172 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. phrases in which to talk of all the cathedrals in "England and elsewhere. They are alike in their great features an acre or two of stone flags for a pavement ; rows of vast columns supporting a vaulted roof at a dusky height ; great windows, sometimes richly bedimmed with ancient or modern stained glass ; and an elaborately carved screen between the nave and chancel, breaking the vista that might else be of such glorious length, and which is fur ther choked up by a massive organ, — in spite of which obstructions, you catch the broad, variegated glimmer of the painted east window, where a hundred saints wear their robes of transfiguration. Behind the screen are the carved oaken stalls of the Chapter and Prebendaries, the Bishop's throne, the pulpit, the altar, and whatever else may furnish out the Holy of Holies. Nor must we for get the range of chapels, (once dedicated to Catholic saints, but which have now lost their individual consecra tion,) nor the old monuments of kings, warriors, and prel ates, in the side-aisles of the chancel. In close conti guity to the main body of the Cathedral is the Chapter- House, which, here at Lincoln, as at Salisbury, is sup ported by one central pillar rising from the floor, and putting forth branches like a tree, to hold up the roof. Adjacent to the Chapter-House are the cloisters, extend ing round a quadrangle, and paved with lettered tomb stones, the more antique of which have had their inscrip tions half obliterated by the feet of monks taking their noontide exercise in these sheltered walks, five hundred years ago. Some of these old burial-stones, although with ancient crosses engraved upon them, have been made to serve as memorials to dead people of very recent date. PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 173 111 the chancel, among the tombs of forgotten bishops and knights, we saw an immense slab of stone purporting to be the monument of Catherine Swineferd, wife of John of Gaunt ; also, here was the shrine of the little Saint Hugh, that Christian child who was fabled to have been crucified by the Jews of Lincoln. The Cathedral is not particularly rich in monuments ; for it suffered grievous outrage and dilapidation, both at the Reformation and in Cromwell's time. This latter iconoclast is in especially bad odor with the sextons and vergers of most of the old churches which I have visited. His soldiers stabled their steeds in the nave of Lincoln Cathedral, and hacked and hewed the monkish sculptures, and the ancestral me morials of great families, quite at their wicked and ple beian pleasure. Nevertheless, there are some most ex quisite and marvellous specimens of flowers, foliage, anil grape-vines, and miracles of stone-work twined about arches, as if the material had been as soft as wax in the cunning sculptor's hands, — the leaves being represented with all their veins, so that you would almost think it petrified Nature, for which he sought to steal the praise of Art. Here, too, were those grotesque faces which al ways grin at you from the projections of monkish archi tecture, as if the builders had gone mad with their own deep solemnity, or dreaded such a catastrophe, unless per mitted to throw in something ineffably absurd. Originally, it is supposed, all the pillars of this great edifice, and all these magic sculptures, were polished to the utmost degree of lustre ; nor is it unreasonable to think that the artists would have taken these further pains, when they had already bestowed so much labor in working out their conceptions to the extremest point. 174 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. But, at present, the whole interior of the Cathedral is smeared over with a yellowish wash, the very meanest hue imaginable, and for which somebody's soul has a bitter reckoning to undergo. In the centre of the grassy quadrangle about which the rloisters perambulate is a small, mean, brick building, with a locked door. Our guide, — I forgot to say that we had been captured by a verger, in black, and with a white tie, but of a lusty and jolly aspect, — our guide unlocked this door, and disclosed a flight of steps. At the bottom appeared what I should have taken to be a large square of dim, worn, and faded oil-carpeting, which might originally have been painted of a rather gaudy pattern. This was a Roman tessellated pavement, made of small colored bricks, or pieces of burnt clay. It was accidentally discovered here, and has not been med dled with, further than by removing the superincumbent earth and rubbish. Nothing else occurs to me, just now, to be recorded about the interior of the Cathedral, except that we saw a place where the stone pavement had been worn away by the feet of ancient pilgrims scraping upon it, as they knelt down before a shrine of the Virgin. Leaving the Minster, we now went along a street of more venerable appearance than we had heretofore seen, bordered with houses, the high, peaked roofs of which were covered with red earthen tiles. It led us to a Ro man arch, which was once the gateway of a fortification, and has been striding across the English street ever since the latter was a faint village-path, and for centuries be fore. The arch is about four hundred yards from the Cathedral ; and it is to be noticed that there are Roman PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 175 remains in all this neighborhood, some above ground, and doubtless innumerable more beneath it ; for, as in ancient Rome itself, an inundation of accumulated soil seems to have swept over what was the surface of that earlier day. The gateway which I am speaking about is probably buried to a third of its height, and perhaps has as perfect a Roman pavement (if sought for at the origi nal depth) as that which runs beneath the Arch of Titus. It is a rude and massive structure, and seems as stalwart now as it could have been two thousand years ago ; and though Tim«j has gnawed it externally, he has made what amends he could by crowning its rough and broken sum mit with grass and weeds, and planting tufts of yellow flowers on the projections up and down the sides. There are the ruins of a Norman castle, built by the Conqueror, in pretty close proximity to the Cathedral ; but the old gateway is obstructed by a modern door of wood, and we were denied admittance because some part of the precincts are used as a prison. We now rambled about on the broad back of the hill, which, besides the Minster and ruined castle, is the site of some stately and queer old houses, and of many mean little hovels. I sus pect that all or most of the life of the present day has subsided into the lower town, and that only priests, poor people, and prisoners dwell in these upper regions. In the wide, dry moat at the base of the castle-Tvall are clustered whole colonies of small houses, some of brick, Out the larger portion built of old stones which once made part of the Norman keep, or of Roman structures that existed before the Conqueror's castle was ever dreamed about. They are like toadstools that spring up irom the mould of a decaying tree. Ugly as they are. 176 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. they add wonderfully to the picturesqueness of the scene being quite as valuable, in that respect, as the great, broad, ponderous ruin of the castle-keep, which rose high above our heads, heaving its huge gray mass out of a bank of green foliage and ornamental shrubbery, such as lilacs and other flowering plants, in which its foundations were completely hidden. After walking quite round the castle, I made an ex cursion through the Roman gateway, along a pleasant and level road bordered with dwellings of various char acter. One or two were houses of gentility, with de lightful and shadowy lawns before them; many had those high, red-tiled roofs, ascending into acutely pointed ga bles, which seem to belong to the same epoch as some of the edifices in our own earlier towns ; and there were pleasant-looking cottages, very sylvan and rural, with hedges so dense and high, fencing them in, as almost to hide them up to the eaves of their thatched roofs. In front of one of these I saw various images, crosses, and relics of antiquity, among which were fragments of old Catholic tombstones, disposed by way of ornament. We now went home to the Saracen's Head ; and as the weather was very unpropitious, and it sprinkled a little now and then, I would gladly have felt myself re leased from further thraldom to the Cathedral. But it had taken possession of me, and would not let me be at rest ; so at length I found myself compelled to climb the hill again, between daylight and dusk. A mist was now hovering about the upper height of the great central tower, so as to dim and half obliterate its battlements and pinnacles, even while I stood in the close beneath it. It was the most impressive view that I had had. The PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 177 whole lower part of the structure was seen \\ith perfect distinctness ; but at the very summit the mist was so dense as to form an actual cloud, as well defined as ever I saw resting on a mountain-top. Really and literally, here was a " cloud-capt tower." The entire Cathedral, too, transfigured itself into a richer beauty and more imposing majesty than ever. The longer I looked, the better I loved it. Its exterior is certainly far more beautiful than that of York Min ster ; and its finer effect is due, I think, to the many peaks in which the structure ascends, and to the pinnacles which, as it were, repeat and reecho them into the sky. York Cathedral is comparatively square and angular in its general effect ; but in this at Lincoln there is a con tinual mystery of variety, so that at every glance you are aware of a change, and a disclosure of something new, yet working an harmonious development of what you have heretofore seen. The west front is unspeakably grand, and may be read over and over again forever, and still show undetected meanings, like a great, broad page of marvel lous writing in black-letter, — so many sculptured orna ments there are, blossoming out before your eyes, and gray statues that have grown there since you looked last, and empty niches, and a hundred airy canopies beneath which carved images used to be, and where they will show themselves again, if you gaze long enough. — But I will not say another word about the Cathedral. We spent the rest of the day within the sombre pre cincts of the Saracen's Head, reading yesterday's "Times," " The Guide-Book of Lincoln," and " The Directory of the Eastern Counties." Dismal as the weather was, the street beneath our window was enlivened with a great 12 !78 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. bustle and turmoil of people all the evening, because It was Saturday night, and they had accomplished their week's toil, received their wages, and were making their small purchases against Sunday, and enjoying themselves as well as they knew how. A band of music passed to and fro several times, with the rain-drops falling into the mouth of the brazen trumpet and pattering on the bass- drum ; a spirit-shop, opposite the hotel, had a vast run of custom ; and a coffee-dealer, in the open air, found occasional vent for his commodity, in spite of the cold water that dripped into the cups. The whole breadth of the street, between the Stone Bow and the bridge across the Witham, was thronged to overflowing, and humming with human life. Observing in the Guide Book that a steamer runs on the River Witham between Lincoln and Boston, I in quired of the waiter, and learned that she was to start on Monday at ten o'clock. Thinking it might be an inter esting trip, and a pleasant variation of our customary mode of travel, we determined to make the voyage. The Witham flows through Lincoln, crossing the main street under an arched bridge of Gothic construction, a little below the Saracen's Head. It has more the appearance of a canal than of a river, in its passage through the town, — being bordered with hewn stone masonwork on each side, and provided with one or two locks. The eteamer proved to be small, dirty, and altogether incon venient The early morning had been bright ; but the sky now lowered upon us with a sulky English temper, and we had not long put off before we felt an ugly wind from the German Ocean blowing right in our teeth. There were a number of passengers on board, country- PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 179 people, such as travel by third class on the railway •, for, I suppose, nobody but ourselves ever dreamt of voyaging by the steamer for the sake of what he might happen upon in the way of river scenery. We bothered a good while about getting through a preliminary lock ; nor, when fairly under way, did we ever accomplish, I think, six miles an hour. Constant delays were caused, moreover, by stopping to take up passengers and freight, — not at regular landing-places, but anywhere along the green banks. The scenery was identical with that of the railway, because the latter runs along by the riverside through the whole distance, or nowhere departs from it except to make a short cut across some sinuosity ; so that our only advantage lay in the drawling, snail-like slothfulness of our progress, which allowed us time enough and to spare for the ob jects along the shore. Unfortunately, there was nothing, or next to nothing, to be seen, — the country being one unvaried level over the whole thirty miles of our voyage, — not a hill in sight, either near or far, except that soli tary one on the summit of which we had left Lincoln Cathedral. And the Cathedral was our landmark for four hours or more, and at last rather faded out than was hidden by any intervening object. It would have been a pleasantly lazy day enough, if the rough and bitter wind had not blown directly in our faces, and chilled us through, in spite of the sunshine that soon succeeded a sprinkle or two of rain. These English east-winds, which prevail from February till June, are greater nuisances than the east-wind of our own Atlantic coast, although they do not bring mist and etorm, as with us, but some of the sumiest weather that 180 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. Engl«»id sees. Under their influence, the sky smiles and is villanous. The landscape was tame to the last degree, but had an English character that was abundantly worth our look ing at. A green luxuriance of early grass; old, high- roofed farm-houses, surrounded by their stone barns and ricks of hay and grain ; ancient villages, with the square gray tower of a church seen afar over the level country, amid the cluster of red roofs ; here and there a shadowy grove of venerable trees, surrounding what was perhaps an Elizabethan hall, though it looked more like the abode of some rich yeoman. Once, too, we saw the tower of a medieval castle, that of Tattershall, built by a Crom well, but whether of the Protector's family I cannot tell. But the gentry do not appear to have settled multitu- dinously in this tract of country ; nor is it to be won dered at, since a lover of the picturesque would as soon think of settling in Holland. The river retains its canal- like aspect all along ; and only in the latter part of its course does it become more than wide enough for the little steamer to turn itself round, — at broadest, not more than twice that width. The only memorable incident of our voyage happened when a mother-duck was leading her little fleet of five ducklings across the river, just as our steamer went swaggering by, stirring the quiet stream into great waves that lashed the banks on either side. I saw the immi nence of the catastrophe, and hurried to the stern of the boat to witness its consummation, since I could not pos sibly avert it. The poor ducklings had uttered their baby-quacks, and striven with all their tiny might to escape : four of them, I believe, were washed aside and PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 181 t/nown off unhurt from the steamer's prow ; but the fifth must have gone under the whole length of the keel, and never could have come up alive. At last, in mid-afternoon, we beheld the tall tower of Saint Botolph's Church (three hundred feet high, the same elevation as the tallest tower of Lincoln Cathedral) looming in the distance. At about half-past four we •cached Boston, (which name has been shortened, in the course of ages, by the quick and slovenly English pro nunciation, from Botolph's town,) and were taken by a cab to the Peacock, in the market-place. It was the best hotel in town, though a poor one enough ; and we were shown into a small, stifled parlor, dingy, musty, and scented with stale tobacco-smoke, — tobacco-smoke two days old, for the waiter assured us that the room had not more recently been fumigated. An exceedingly grim waiter he was, apparently a genuine descendant of the old Puritans of this English Boston, and quite as sour as those who people the daughter-city in New England. Our parlor had the one recommendation of looking into the market-place, and affording a sidelong glimpse of the tall spire and noble old church. Tn my first ramble about the town, chance led me to the riverside, at that quarter where the port is situated. Here were long buildings of an old-fashioned aspect, seemingly warehouses, with windows in the high, steep roofs. The Custom-House found ample accommodation within an ordinary dwelling-house. Two or three large schooners were moored along the river's brink, which had here a stone margin; another large and handsome schooner was evidently just finished, rigged and equipped for her first voyage ; the rudiments of another were on J82 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. the stocks, in a shipyard bordering on the river. Still another, while I was looking on, came up the stream, and lowered her mainsail, from a foreign voyage. An old man on the bank hailed her and inquired about her cargo ; but the Lincolnshire people have such a queer way of talking English that I could not understand the reply. Farther down the river, I saw a brig, approach ing rapidly under sail. The whole scene made an odd impression of bustle, and sluggishness, and decay, and a remnant of wholesome life ; and I could not but contrast it with the mighty and populous activity of our own Bos ton, which was once the feeble infant of this old English town ; — the latter, perhaps, almost stationary ever since that day, as if the birth of such an offspring had taken away its own principle of growth. I thought of Long Wharf, and Faneuil Hall, and Washington Street, and the Great Elm, and the State House, and exulted lustily, — but yet began to feel at home in this good old town, for its very name's sake, as I never had before felt, in England. The next morning we came out in the early sunshine, (the sun must have been shining nearly four hours, how ever, for it was after eight o'clock,) and strolled about the streets, like people who had a right to be there. The market-place of Boston is an irregular square, into one end of which the chancel of the church slightly projects. The gates of the churchyard were open and free to all passengers, and the common footway of the towns-people seems to lie to and fro across it. It is paved, according to English custom, with flat tomb stones ; and there are also raised or altar tombs, some of which have armorial bearings on them. One clergy man has caused himself and his wife to be b iried right PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 183 in the middle of the stone-bordered path that traverses the churchyard; so that not an individual of the thou sands who pass along this public way can help trampling over him or her. The scene, nevertheless, was very cheerful in the morning sun : people going about their business in the day's primal freshness, which was just as fresh here as in younger villages ; children, with milk- pails, loitering over the burial-stones ; school-boys play ing leap-frog with the altar-tombs ; the simple old town preparing itself for the day, which would be like myriads of other days that had passed over it, but yet would be worth living through. And down on the churchyard, where were buried many generations whom it remem bered in their time, looked the stately tower of Saint Botolph ; and it was good to see and think of such an age-long giant, intermarrying the present epoch with a distant past, and getting quite imbued with human nature by being so immemorially connected with men's familiar knowledge and homely interests. It is a noble tower ; and the jackdaws evidently have pleasant homes in their hereditary nests among its topmost windows, and live de lightful lives, flitting and cawing about its pinnacles and flying buttresses. I should almost like to be a jackdaw myself, for the sake of living up there. In front of the church, not more than twenty yards off, and with a low brick wall between, flows the River \Vitham. On the hither bank a fisherman was washing his boat ; and another skiff, with her sail lazily half- twisted, lay on the opposite strand. The stream, at this point, is about of such width, that, if the tall tower were to tumble over flat on its face, its top-stone might per- baps reach to the middle of the channel. On the farther 184 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON- shore there is a line of antique-looking houses, with roofs of red tile, and windows opening out of them, — • some of these dwellings being so ancient, that the Rev erend Mr. Cotton, subsequently our first Boston minister, must have seen them with his own bodily eyes, when he used to issue from the front-portal after service. Indeed, there must be very many houses here, and even some streets, that bear much the aspect that they did when the Puritan divine paced solemnly among them. In our rambles about town, we went into a booksel ler's shop to inquire if he had any description of Boston for sale. He offered me (or, rather, produced for in spection, not supposing that I would buy it) a quarto his tory of the town, published by subscription, nearly forty years ago. The bookseller showed himself a well-in formed and affable man, and a local antiquary, to whom a party of inquisitive strangers were a godsend. He had met with several Americans, who, at various times, had come on pilgrimages to this place, and he had been in corres pondence with others. Happening to have heard the name of one member of our party, he showed us great courtesy and kindness, and invited us into his inner domicile, where, as he modestly intimated, he kept a few articles which it might interest us to see. So we went with him through the shop, up-stairs, into the private part of his establishment ; and, really, it was one of the rarest ad ventures I ever met with, to stumble upon this treasure of a man, with his treasury of antiquities and curiosities, veiled behind the unostentatious front of a bookseller's shop, in a very moderate line of village business. The two up-stair rooms into which he introduced us were so crowded ^ith inestimable articles, that we were almost PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 185 afraid to stir, for fear of breaking some fragile thing that had been accumulating value for unknown centuries. The apartment was hung round with pictures and old engravings, many of which were extremely rare. Pre mising that he was going to show us something very curious, Mr. Porter went into the next room and re turned with a counterpane of fine linen, elaborately em broidered with silk, which so profusely covered the linen that the general effect was as if the main texture were silken. It was stained, and seemed very old, and had an ancient fragrance. It was wrought all over with birds and flowers in a most delicate style of needlework, and among other devices, more than once repeated, was the cipher, M. S., — being the initials of one of the most un happy names that ever a woman bore. This quilt was embroidered by the hands of Mary Queen of Scots, dur ing her imprisonment at Fotheringay Castle ; and having evidently been a work of years, she had doubtless shed many tears over it, and wrought many doleful thoughts and abortive schemes into its texture, along with the birds and flowers. As a counterpart to this most pre cious relic, our friend produced some of the handiwork of a former Queen of Otaheite, presented by her to Cap tain Cook : it was a bag, cunningly made of some deli cate vegetable stuff, and ornamented with feathers. Next, he brought out a green silk waistcoat of very antique fashion, trimmed about the edges and pocket- holes with a rich and delicate embroidery of gold and silver. This (as the possessor of the treasure proved, by tracing its pedigree till it came into his hands) was once the vestment of Queen Elizabeth's Lord Burleigh : but that great statesman must have been a person of very 186 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. moderate girth in the chest and waist ; for the garment was hardly more than a comfortable fit for a boy of eleven, the smallest American of our party, who tried on the gorgeous waistcoat. Then, Mr. Porter produced some curiously engraved drinking-glasses, with a view of Saint Botolph's steeple on one of them, and other Boston edi fices, public or domestic, on the remaining two, very ad mirably done. These crystal goblets had been a present, long ago, to an old master of the Free School from his pupils ; and it is very rarely, I imagine, that a retired schoolmaster can exhibit such trophies of gratitude and affection, won from the victims of his birch rod. Our kind friend kept bringing out one unexpected and wholly unexpectable thing after another, as if he were a magician, and had only to fling a private signal into the air, and some attendant imp would hand forth any strange relic we might choose to ask for. He was especially rich in drawings by the Old Masters, producing two or three, of exquisite delicacy, by Raphael, one by Salvator, a head by Rembrandt, and others, in chalk or pen-and-ink, by Giordano, Benvenuto Cellini, and hands almost as fa mous ; and besides what were shown us, there seemed to be an endless supply of these art-treasures in reserve. On the wall hung a crayon-portrait of Sterne, never en graved, representing him as a rather young man, bloom ing, and not uncomely : it was the worldly face of a man fond of pleasure, but without that ugly, keen, sarcastic, odd expression that we see in his only engraved portrait. The picture is an original, and must needs be very valu able ; and we wish it might be prefixed to some new and worthier biography of a writer whose character the world has always treated with singular harshness, considering PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 187 how much it owes him. There was likewise a crayon- portrait of Sterne's wife, looking so haughty and un- amiable, that the wonder is, not that he ultimately left her, hut how he ever contrived to live a week with such an awful woman. After looking at these, and a great many more things than I can rememher, above stairs, we went down to a parlor, where tlu's wonderful bookseller opened an old cabinet, containing numberless drawers, and looking just fit to be the repository of such knick-knacks as were stored up in it. He appeared to possess more treasures than he himself knew of, or knew where to find ; but, rummaging here and there, he brought forth things new and old : rose-nobles, Victoria crowns, gold angels, double- sovereigns of George IV., two-guinea pieces of George II. ; a marriage-medal of the first Napoleon, only forty- five of which were ever struck off, and of which even the British Museum does not contain a specimen like this, in gold ; a brass medal, three or four inches in diameter, of a Roman emperor ; together with buckles, bracelets, amulets, and I know not what besides. There was a green silk tassel from the fringe of Queen Mary's bed at ITolyrood Palace. There were illuminated mis sals, antique Latin Bibles, and (what may seem of es pecial interest to the historian) a Secret-Book of Queen Elizabeth, in manuscript, written, for aught I know, by her own hand. On examination, however, it proved to contain, not secrets of state, but recipes for dishes, drinks, medicines, washes, and all such matters of house wifery, the toilet, and domestic quackery, among which we were horrified by the title of one of the nostrums, " How to kill a Fellow quickly " ! We never doubted 188 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. that bloody Queen Bess might often have had occasion for such a recipe, but wondered at her frankness, and at her attending to these anomalous necessities in such a methodical way. The truth is, we had read amiss, and the Queen had spelt amiss : the word was " Fellon," — a Bort of whitlow, — not " Fellow." Our hospitable friend now made us drink a glass of wine, as old and genuine as the curiosities of his cabinet ; and while sipping it, we ungratefully tried to excite hi* envy, by telling of various things, interesting to an an tiquary and virtuoso, which we had seen in the course of our travels about England. We spoke, for instance, of a missal bound in solid gold and set around with jewels, but of such intrinsic value as no setting could enhance, for it was exquisitely illuminated, throughout, by the hand of Raphael himself. We mentioned a little silver rase which once contained a portion of the heart of Louis XIV. nicely done up in spices, but, to the owner's horror and astonishment, Dean Buckland popped the kingly morsel into his mouth, and swallowed it. We told about the black-letter prayer-book of King Charles the Martyr, used by him upon the scaffold, taking which into our hands, it opened of itself at the Communion Service ; and there, on the left-hand page, appeared a spot about as large as a sixpence, of a yellowish or brownish hue : a drop of the King's blood had fallen there. Mr. Porter now accompanied us to the church, but first leading us to a vacant spot of ground where old John Cotton's vicarage had stood till a very short time since. According to our friend's description, it was a humble habitation, of the cottage order, built of brick, with a thatched roof. The site is now rudely fenced in, and PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 189 cultivated as a vegetable garden. In the right-hand aisle of the church there is an ancient chapel, which, at the time of our visit, was in process of restoration, and was to be dedicated to Mr. Cotton, whom these English peo ple consider as the founder of our American Boston. It would contain a painted memorial-window, in honor of the old Puritan minister. A festival in commemoration of the event was to take place in the ensuing July, to which I had myself received an invitation, but I knew too well the pains and penalties incurred by an invited guest at public festivals in England to accept it. It ought to be recorded, (and it seems to have made a very kindly impression on our kinsfolk here,) that five hun dred pounds had been contributed by persons in the United States, principally in Boston, towards the cost of the memorial-window, and the repair and restoration of the chapel. After we emerged from the chapel, Mr. Porter ap proached us with the vicar, to whom he kindly introduced us, and then took his leave. May a stranger's benedic tion rest upon him ! He is a most pleasant man ; rather, I imagine, a virtuoso than an antiquary ; for he seemed to value the Queen of Otaheite's bag as highly as Queen Mary's embroidered quilt, and to have an omnivorous appetite for everything strange and rare. Would that we could fill up his shelves and drawers (if there are any vacant spaces left) with the choicest trifles that have dropped out of Time's carpet-bag, or give him the carpet bag itself, to take out what he will ! The vicar looked about thirty years old, a gentleman, evidently assured of his position, (as clergymen of the Established Church invariably are,) comfortable and 190 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. well-to-do, a scholar and a Christian, and fit to be a bishop, knowing how to make the most of life without prejudice to the life to come. I was glad to see such a model English priest so suitably accommodated with an old English church. He kindly and courteously did the honors, showing us quite round the interior, giving us nil the information that we required, and then leaving us to the quiet enjoyment of what we came to see. The interior of Saint Botolph's is very fine and satis factory, as stately, almost, as a cathedral, and has been repaired — so far as repairs were necessary — in a chaste and noble style. The great eastern window is of modern painted glass, but is the richest, mellowest, and tenderest modern window that I have ever seen : the art of paint ing these glowing transparencies in pristine perfection being one that the world has lost. The vast, clear space of the interior church delighted me. There was no screen, — nothing between the vestibule and the altar to break the long vista ; even the organ stood aside, — though it by and by made us aware of its presence by a melodious roar. Around the walls there were old engraved brasses, and a stone coffin, and an alabaster knight of Saint John, and an alabaster lady, each recumbent at full length, as large as life, and in perfect preservation, except for 9 slight modern touch at the tips of their noses. In the chancel we saw a great deal of oaken work, quaintly and admirably carved, especially about the seats formerly ap propriated to the monks, which were so contrived as to tumble down with a tremendous crash, if the occupant happened to fall asleep. We now essayed to climb into the upper regions. Tip we went, winding and still winding round the circular PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 191 stairs, till we came to the gallery beneath the stone roof of the tower, whence we could look down and see the raised Font, and my Talma lying on one of the steps> and looking about as Dig as a pocket-handkerchief. Then up again, up, up, up, through a yet smaller staircase, till we emerged into another stone gallery, above the jack daws, and far above the roof beneath which we had be fore made a halt. Then up another flight, which led U3 into a pinnacle of the temple, but not the highest ; so, re tracing our steps, we took the right turret this time, and emerged into the loftiest lantern, where we saw level Lincolnshire, far and near, though with a haze on the distant horizon. There were dusty roads, a river, and canals, converging towards Boston, which — a congrega tion of red-tiled roofs — lay beneath our feet, with pigmy people creeping about its narrow streets. We were three hundred feet aloft, and the pinnacle on which we stood is a landmark forty miles at sea. Content, an*d weary of our elevation, we descended the corkscrew stairs and left the church ; the last object that we noticed in the interior being a bird, which appeared to be at home there, and responded with its cheerful notes to the swell of the organ. Pausing on the church- steps, we observed that there were formerly two statues, one on each side of the doorway ; the canopies still re maining, and the pedestals being about a yard from the ground. Some of Mr. Cotton's Puritan parishioners are probably responsible for the disappearance of these stone saints. This doorway at the base of the tower is now much dilapidated, but must once have been very rich and of a peculiar fashion. It opens its arch through a great square tablet of stone, reared against the front of the 192 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. tower. On most of the projections, whether on the tower or about the body of the church, there are gar goyles of genuine Gothic grotesqueness, — fiends, beasts, angels, and combinations of all three; and where por tions of the edifice are restored, the modern sculptors have tried to imitate these wild fantasies, but with veiy poor success. Extravagance and absurdity have still their law, and should pay as rigid obedience to it as the primmest things on earth. In our further rambles about Boston, we crossed the river by a bridge, and observed that the larger part of the town seems to lie on that side of its navigable stream. The crooked streets and narrow lanes reminded me much of Hanover Street, Ann Street, and other portions of the North End of our American Boston, as I remember that picturesque region in my boyish days. It is not un reasonable to suppose that the local habits and recollec tions of the first settlers may have had some influence on the physical character of the streets and houses in the New England metropolis ; at any rate, here is a similar intricacy of bewildering lanes, and numbers of old peaked and projecting-storied dwellings, such as I used to see there. It is singular what a home-feeling and sense of kindred I derived from this hereditary connection and fancied physiognomical resemblance between the old town and its well-grown daughter, and how reluctant I was, after chill years of banishment, to leave this hos pitable place, on that account. Moreover, it recalled some of the features of another American town, my own dear native place, when I saw the seafaring people lean ing against posts, and sitting on planks, under the lee of warehouses. — or lolling on long-boats, drawn up high PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 193 and dry, ins sailors and old wharf-rats are accustomed to do, in seaports of little business. In other respects, the English town is more village-like than either of the American ones. The women and budding girls chat to gether at their doors, and exchange merry greetings with young men ; children chase one another in the summer twilight ; school-boys sail little boats on the river, or play at marbles across the flat tombstones in the church yard ; and ancient men, in breeches and long waistcoats, wander slowly about the streets, with a certain familiarity of deportment, as if each one were everybody's grand father. I have frequently observed, in old English towns, that Old Age comes forth more cheerfully and genially into the sunshine than among ourselves, where the rush, stir, bustle, and irreverent energy of youth are so preponderant, that the poor, forlorn grandsires begin to doubt whether they have a right to breathe in such a world any longer, and so hide their silvery heads in soli tude. Speaking of old men, I am reminded of the scholars of the Boston Charity-School, who walk about in antique, long-skirted blue coats, and knee-breeches, and with bands at their necks, — perfect and grotesque pictures of the costume of three centuries ago. On the morning of our departure, I looked from the parlor-window of the Peacock into the market-place, and beheld its irregular square already well covered with booths, and more in process of being put up, by stretch ing tattered sail-cloth on poles. It was market-day The dealers were arranging their commodities, consist ing chiefly of vegetables, the great bulk of which seemed to be cabbages. Later in the forenoon there was a much greater varietj of merchandise : basket-work, both for 13 104 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. fancy and use ; twig-brooms, beehives, oranges, rustic attire ; all sorts of things, in short, that are commonly sold at a rural fair. I heard the lowing of cattle, too, and the bleating of sheep, and found that there was a market for cows, oxen, and pigs, in another part of the town. A crowd of towns-people and Lincolnshire yeo men elbowed one another in the square ; Mr. Punch was squeaking in one corner, and a vagabond juggler tried to find space for his exhibition in another : so that my final glimpse of Boston was calculated to leave a livelier im pression than my former ones. Meanwhile the tower of Saint Botolph's looked benignantly down ; and I fancied it was bidding me farewell, as it did Mr. Cotton, two or three hundred years ago, and telling me to describe its venerable height, and the ^ town beneath it, to the people, of the American city, who are partly akin, if not to the living inhabitants of Old Boston, yet to some of the dust that lies in its churchyard. One thing more. They have a Bunker Hill in the vicinity of their town ; and (what could hardly be ex pected of an English community) seem proud to think that their neighborhood has given name to our first and most widely celebrated and best remembered battle* Beld. NEAR OXFORD. ON a fine morning in September, we set out on an excursion to Blenheim, — the sculptor and myself being seated on the box of our four-horse carriage, two more of the party in the dicky, and the others less agreeably accommodated inside. We had no coachman, but two postilions in short scarlet jackets and leather breeches with top-boots, each astride of a horse ; so that, all the way along, when not otherwise attracted, we had the interesting spectacle of their up-and-down bobbing in the saddle. It was a sunny and beautiful day, a speci men of the perfect English weather, just warm enough for comfort, — indeed, a little too warm, perhaps, in the noontide sun, — yet retaining a mere spice or suspicion of austerity, which made it all the more enjoyable. The country between Oxford and Blenheim is not par ticularly interesting, being almost level, or undulating very slightly; nor is Oxfordshire, agriculturally, a rich part of England. We saw one or two hamlets, and I espe cially remember a picturesque old gabled house at a turnpike-gate, and, altogether, the wayside scenery had an aspect of old-fashioned English life ; but there was nothing very memorable till we reached Woodstock, and Btopped to water our horses at the Black Bear. This neighborhood is called New Woodstock, but has by no means the brand-new appearance of an American 196 NEAR OXFORD. town, being a large village of stone houses, most of them pretty well time-worn and weather-stained. The Bl»ck Bear is an ancient inn, large and respectable, with balus- traded staircases, and intricate passages and corridors, and queer old pictures and engravings hanging in the entries and apartments. We ordered a lunch (the most delightful of English institutions, next to dinner) to be ready against our return, and then resumed our drive tc Blenheim. The park-gate of Blenheim stands close to the end of the village-street of "Woodstock. Immediately on pass ing through its portals, we saw the stately palace in the distance, but made a wide circuit of the park before ap proaching it. This noble park contains three thousand acres of land, and is fourteen miles in circumference. Having been, in part, a royal domain before it was granted to the Marlborough family, it contains many trees of unsurpassed antiquity, and has doubtless been the haunt of game and deer for centuries. We saw pheasants in abundance, feeding in the open lawns and glades ; and the stags tossed their antlers and bounded away, not affrighted, but only shy and gamesome, as we drove by. It is a magnificent pleasure-ground, not too tamely kept, nor rigidly subjected within rule, but vast enough to have lapsed back into Nature again, after all the pains that the landscape-gardeners of Queen Anne's time bestowed on it, when the domain of Blenheim was scientifically laid out. The great, knotted, slanting trunks of the old oaks do not now look as if man had much intermeddled with their growth and postures. The trees of later date, that were set out in the Great Duke'a time, are arranged on the plan of the order of battle in NEAR OXFORD. 197 which the illustrious commander ranked his troops at Blenheim ; but the ground covered is so extensive, and the trees now so luxuriant, that the spectator is not dis- agreeably conscious of their standing in military array, i\s if Orpheus had summoned them together by beat of drum. The effect must have been very formal a hundred and fifty years ago, but has ceased to be so, — although the trees, I presume, have kept their ranks with even more fidelity than Marlborough's veterans did. One of the park-keepers, on horseback, rode beside our carriage, pointing out the choice views, and glimpses at the palace, as we drove through the domain. There is a very large artificial lake, (to say the truth, it seemed to me fully worthy of being compared with the Welsh lakes, at least, if not with those of Westmoreland,) which was created by Capability Brown, and fills the basin that he scooped for it, just as if Nature had poured these broad waters into one of her own valleys. It is a most beautiful object at a distance, and not less so on its imme diate banks ; for the water is very pure, being supplied by a small river, of the choicest transparency, which was turned thitherward for the purpose. And Blenheim owes not merely this water-scenery, but almost all its other beauties, to the contrivance of man. Its natural features are not striking ; but Art has effected such wonderful things that the uninstructed visitor would never guess that nearly the whole scene was but the embodied thought of a human mind. A skilful painter hardly does more for his blank sheet of canvas than the landscape-gardener, the planter, the arranger of trees, has done for the monoto nous surface of Blenheim, — making the most of every undulation, — flinging down a hillock, a big lump of earth 108 NEAR OXFORD. out of a giant's hand, wherever it was needed, — putting in beauty as often as there was a niche for it, — opening vistas to every point that deserved to be seen, and throw ing a veil of impenetrable foliage around what ought to be hidden ; — and then, to be sure, the lapse of a cen tury has softened the harsh outline of man's labors, and has given the place back to Nature again with the addi tion of what consummate science could achieve. After driving a good way, we came to a battlemented tower and adjoining house, which used to be the residence of the Ranger of Woodstock Park, who held charge of the property for the King before the Duke of Marl- borough possessed it. The keeper opened the door for us, and in the entrance-hall we found various things that had to do with the chase and woodland sports. We mounted the staircase, through several stories, up to the top of the tower, whence there was a view of the spires of Oxford, and of points much farther off, — very indis tinctly seen, however, as is usually the case with the misty distances of England. Returning to the ground- floor, we were ushered into the room in which died Wil- mot, the wicked Earl of Rochester, who was Ranger of the Park in Charles II.'s time. It is a low and bare little room, with a window in front, and a smaller one behind ; and in the contiguous entrance-room there are the re mains of an old bedstead, beneath the canopy of which, perhaps, Rochester may have made the penitent end that Bishop Burnet attributes to him. I hardly know what it is, in this poor fellow's character, which affects us with greater tenderness on his behalf than for all the other profligates of his day, who seem to have been neither better nor worse than himself. I rather suspect that he NEAR OXFORD. 199 had a human heart which never quite died out of him, and the warmth of which is still faintly perceptible amid the dissolute trash which he left behind. Methinks, if such good fortune ever befell a bookish man, 1 should choose this lodge for my own residence, with the topmost room of the tower for a study, and all the se clusion of cultivated wildness beneath to ramble in. There being no such possibility, we drove on, catching glimpsea of the palace in new points of view, and by and by came to Rosamond's Well. The particular tradition that con nects Fair Rosamond with it is not now in my memory ; but if Rosamond ever lived and loved, and ever had her abode in the maze of Woodstock, it may well be believed that she and Henry sometimes sat beside this spring. It gushes out from a bank, through some old stone-work, and dashes its little cascade (about as abundant as one might turn out of a large pitcher) into a pool, whence it steals away towards the lake, which is not far removed. The water is exceedingly cold, and as pure as the legen dary Rosamond was not, and is fancied to possess medicinal virtues, like springs at which saints have quenched their thirst. There were two or three old women and some children in attendance with tumblers, which they present to visitors, full of the consecrated water ; but most of us filled the tumblers for ourselves, and drank. Thence we drove to the Triumphal Pillar which was erected in honor of the Great Duke, and on the summit of which he stands, in a Roman garb, holding a winged figure of Victory in his hand, as an ordinary man might hold a bird. The column is I know not how many feet high, but lofty enough, at any rate, to elevate Marlbor- ough far above the rest of the world, and to be visible a 200 NEAR OXFORD. long way off ; and it is so placed in reference to other ob jects, that, wherever the hero wandered about his grounds, and especially as he issued from his mansion, he must in evitably have been reminded of his glory. In truth, until I came to Blenheim, I never had so positive and material an idea of what Fame really is — of what the admiration of his country can do for a successful warrior — as I carry away with me and shall always retain. Unless he had the moral force of a thousand men together, his egotism (beholding himself everywhere, imbuing the entire soil, growing in the woods, rippling and gleaming in the water, and pervading the very air with his greatness) must have been swollen within him like the liver of a Strasbourg goose. On the huge tablets inlaid into the pedestal of the column, the entire Act of Parliament, bestowing Blenheim on the Duke of Marlborough and his posterity, is engraved in deep letters, painted black on the marble ground. The pillar stands exactly a mile from the prin cipal front of the palace, in a straight line with the pre cise centre of its entrance-hall ; so that, as already said, it was the Duke's principal object of contemplation. We now proceeded to the palace-gate, which is a great pillared archway, of wonderful loftiness and state, giving admittance into a spacious quadrangle. A stout, elderly, and rather surly footman in livery appeared at the cm- trance, and took possession of whatever canes, umbrellas, and parasols he could get hold of, in order to claim six pence on our departure. This had a somewhat ludicrous effect. There is much public outcry against the mean ness of the present Duke in his arrangements for the admission of visitors (chiefly, of course, his native country men) to view the magnificent palace which their fore- NEAR OXFORD. 201 fathers bestowed upon his own. In many cases, it seems hard that a private abode should be exposed to the in trusion of the public merely because the proprietor has inherited or created a splendor which attracts general curiosity ; insomuch that his home loses its sanctity and seclusion for the very reason that it is better than other men's houses. But in the case of Blenheim, the public iiave certainly an equitable claim to admission, both be cause the fame of its first inhabitant is a national pos session, and because the mansion was a national gift, one of the purposes of which was to be a token of gratitude and glory to the English people themselves. If a man chooses to be illustrious, he is very likely to incur some little inconveniences himself, and entail them on his pos- *erity. Nevertheless, his present Grace of Marlborough absolutely ignores the public claim above suggested, and (with a thrift of which even the hero of Blenheim him self did not set the example) sells tickets admitting six persons at ten shillings : if only one person enters the gate, he must pay for six ; and if there are seven in com pany, two tickets are required to admit them. The at tendants, who meet you everywhere in the park and palace, expect fees on their own private account, — their noble master pocketing the ten shillings. But, to be sure, the visitor gets his money's worth, since it buys him the right to speak just as freely of the Duke of Marlborough as if he were the keeper of the Cremorne Gardens.* * The above was written two or three years ago, or more; and the Duke of that day has since transmitted his coronet to his successor, who, we understand, has adopted much more liberal arrangements. There is seldom anything to criticize or complain of, as regards th« facility of obtaining admission to interesting private houses in En.pj- 202 NEAR OXFORD. Passing through a gateway on the opposite side of the quadrangle, we had before us the noble classic front of the palace, with its two projecting wings. We ascended the lofty steps of the portal, and were admitted into the entrance-hall, the height of which, from floor to ceiling, is not much less than seventy feet, being the entire elevation of the edifice. The hall is lighted by windows in the upper story, and, it being a clear, bright day, was very radiant with lofty sunshine, amid which a swallow was flitting to and fro. The ceiling was painted by Sir James Thornhill in some allegorical design, (doubtless commemorative of Marlborough's victories,) the purport of which I did not take the trouble to make out, — contenting myself with the general effect, which was most splendidly and effec tively ornamental. We were guided through the show-rooms by a very civil person, who allowed us to take pretty much our own time in looking at the pictures. The collection is exceed ingly valuable, — many of these works of Art having been presented to the Great Duke by the crowned heads of England or the Continent. One room was all aglow with pictures by Rubens ; and there were works of Ra phael, and many other famous painters, any one of which would be sufficient to illustrate the meanest house that might contain it. I remember none of them, however (not being in a picture-seeing mood,) so well as Van- dyck's large and familiar picture of Charles I. on horse back, with a figure and face of melancholy dignity such as never by any other hand was put on canvas. Yet, on considering this face of Charles (which I find often re peated in half-lengths) and translating it from the ideal into literalism, T doubt whether the unfortunate king was NEAR OXFORD. 203 really a handsome or impressive-looking man : a high thin-ridged nose, a meagre, hatchet face, and reddish hail and beard, — these are the literal facts. It is the paint er's art that has thrown such pensive and shadowy grace around him. On our passage through this beautiful suite of apart ments, we saw, through the vista of open doorways, a boy of ten or twelve years old coming towards us from the farther rooms. He had on a straw hat, a linen sack that had certainly been washed and re-washed for a summer or two, and gray trousers a good deal worn, — a dress, in short, which an American mother in middle station would have thought too shabby for her darling school boy's ordinary wear. This urchin's face was rather pale, (as those of English children are apt to be, quite as often as our own,) but he had pleasant eyes, an intelli gent look, and an agreeable, boyish manner. It was Lord Sunderland, grandson of the present Duke, and heir — • though not, I think, in the direct line — of the blood of the great Maryborough, and of the title and estate. After passing through the first suite of rooms, we were conducted through a corresponding suite on the opposite side of the entrance-hall. These latter apartments are most richly adorned with tapestries, wrought and pre sented to the first Duke by a sisterhood of Flemish nuns they look like great, glowing pictures, and completely cover the walls of the rooms. The designs purport to represent the Duke's battles and sieges ; and everywhere we see the hero himself, as large as life, and as gorgeous in scarlet and gold as the holy sisters could make him, with a three-cornered hat and flowing wig, reining in his horse, and extending his leading-staff in the attitude of 204 NEAR OXFORD. command. Next to Marlborough, Prince Eugene is the most prominent figure. In the way of upholstery, there can never have been anything more magnificent than these tapestries ; and, considered as works of Art, they have quite as much merit as nine pictures out of ten. One whole wing of the palace is occupied by the library, a most noble room, with a vast perspective length trom end to end. Its atmosphere is brighter and more cheerful than that of most libraries : a wonderful contrast to the old college-libraries of Oxford, and perhaps less sombre and suggestive of thoughtfulness than any large library ought to be ; inasmuch as so many studious brains as have left their deposit on the shelves cannot have con spired without producing a very serious and ponderous result. Both walls and ceiling are white, and there arft elaborate doorways and fireplaces of white marble. Th& floor is of oak, so highly polished that our feet slipped upon it as if it had been New-England ice. At one end of the room stands a statue of Queen Anne in her royal robes, which are so admirably designed and exquisitely wrought that the spectator certainly gets a strong concep tion of her royal dignity ; while the face of the statue, fleshy and feeble, doubtless conveys a suitable idea of hei personal character. The marble of this work, long as it has stood there, is as white as snow just fallen, and must have required most faithful and religious care to keep it BO. As for the volumes of the library, they are wired within the cases and turn their gilded backs upon the visitor, keeping their treasures of wit and wisdom just as intangible as if still in the unwrought mines of human thought. I remember nothing else in the palace, except the NEAR OXFORD. 205 chapel, to which we were conducted last, and where we saw a splendid monument to the first Duke and Duchess, sculptured by Rysbrach, at the cost, it is said, of forty thousand pounds. The design includes the statues of the deceased dignitaries, and various allegorical flourishes, fantasies, and confusions; and beneath sleep the great Duke and his proud wife, their veritable bones and dust, md probably all the Marlboroughs that have since died. It is not quite a comfortable idea, that these mouldy an cestors still inhabit, after their fashion, the house where their successors spend the passing day ; but the adulation lavished upon the hero of Blenheim could not have been consummated, unless the palace of his lifetime had be come likewise a stately mausoleum over his remains, — and such we felt it all to be, after gazing at his tomb. The next business was to see the private gardens. An old Scotch under-gardener admitted us and led the way, and seemed to have a fair prospect of earning the fee all by himself; but by and by another respectable Scotch man made his appearance and took us in charge, proving to be the head-gardener in person. He was extremely intelligent and agreeable, talking both scientifically and lovingly about trees and plants, of which there is every variety capable of English cultivation. Positively, the Garden of Eden cannot have been more beautiful than this private garden of Blenheim. It contains three hundred acres, and by the artful circumlocution of the paths, and the undulations, and the skilfully interposed clumps of trees, is made to appear limitless. The sylvan delights of a whole country are compressed into this space, as whole fields of Persian roses go to the concoction of an ounce of precious attar. The world within that garden-fence 206 NEAR OXFORD. is riot the same weary and dusty world with which we outside mortals are conversant; it is a finer, lovelier, more harmonious Nature ; and the Great Mother lends herself kindly to the gardener's will, knowing that he will make evident the half-obliterated traits of her pris tine and ideal beauty, and allow her to take all the credit and praise to herself. I doubt whether there is ever any winter within that precinct, — any clouds, except the fleecy ones of summer. The sunshine that I saw there rests upon my recollection of it as if it were eternal. The lawns and glades are like the memory of places where one has wandered when first in love. What a good and happy life might be spent in a para dise like this ! And yet, at that very moment, the be sotted Duke (ah! I have let out a secret which I meant to keep to myself; but the ten shillings must pay for all) was in that very garden, (for the guide told us so, and cautioned our young people not to be uproarious,) and, if in a condition for arithmetic, was thinking of nothing nobler than how many ten-shilling tickets had that day been sold. Republican as I am, I should still love to think that noblemen lead noble lives, and that all this stately and beautiful environment may serve to elevate them a little way above the rest of us. If it fail to do so, the disgrace falls equally upon the whole race of mortals as on themselves ; because it proves that no more favorable conditions of existence would eradicate our vices and weaknesses. How sad, if this be so ! Even a herd of swine, eating the acorns under those magnificent oaks of Blenheim, would be cleanlier and of better habits than ordinary swine. Well, all that I have written is pitifully meagre, as a NEAR OXFORD. 207 description of Blenheim ; and I hate to lea re it without some more adequate expression of the noble edifice, with its rich domain, all as I saw them in that beautiful sun shine ; for, if a day had been chosen out of a hundred years, it could not have been a finer one. But I must give up the attempt ; only further remarking that the finest trees here were cedars, of which I saw one — and there may have been many such — immense in girth, and not less than three centuries old. I likewise saw a vast heap of laurel, two hundred feet in circumference, all growing from one root ; and the gardener offered to show us another growth of twice that stupendous size. If the Great Duke himself had been buried in that spot, his heroic heart could not have been the seed of a more plentiful crop of laurels. We now went back to the Black Bear, and sat down to a cold collation, of which we ate abundantly, and drank (in the good old English fashion) a due proportion of various delightful liquors. A stranger in England, in his rambles to various quarters of the country, may learn little in regard to wines, (for the ordinary English taste is simple, though sound, in that particular,) but he makes acquaintance with more varieties of hop and malt liquor than he previously supposed to exist. I remember a sort of foaming stuff, called hop-champagne, which is very vivacious, and appears to be a hybrid between ale and bottled cider. Another excellent tipple for warm weather is concocted by mixing brown-stout or bitter ale with ginger-beer, the foam of which stirs up the heavier liquor from its depths, forming a compound of singular vivacity and sufficient body. But of all things ever brewed from mail, (unless it be the Trinity Ale of Cambridge, which 208 NEAR OXFORD. I drank long afterwards, and which Barry Cornwall has celebrated in immortal verse,) commend me to the Arch deacon, as the Oxford scholars call it, in honor of the jovial dignitary who first taught these erudite worthies how to brew their favorite nectar. John Barleycorn has given his very heart to this admirable liquor ; it is a superior kind of ale, the Prince of Ales, with a richer flavor and a mightier spirit than you can find elsewhere in this weary world. Much have we been strengthened and encouraged by the potent blood of the Archdeacon A few days after our excursion to Blenheim, the same party set forth, in two flies, on a tour to some other places of interest in the neighborhood of Oxford. It was again a delightful day ; and, in truth, every day, of late, had been so pleasant that it seemed as if each must be the very last of such perfect weather ; and yet the long suc cession had given us confidence in as many more to come The climate of England has been shamefully maligned its sulkiness and asperities are not nearly so offensive a Englishmen tell us (their climate being the only attribute of their country which they never overvalue) ; and tht really good summer weather is the very kindest and sweetest that the world knows. We first drove to the village of Cumnor, about six miles from Oxford, and alighted at the entrance of thft church. Here, while waiting for the keys, we looked at an old wall of the churchyard, piled up of loose gray stones which are said to have once formed a portion of Cumnor Hall, celebrated in Mickle's ballad and Scott's romance. The hall must have been in very close vicinity to the church, — not more than twenty yards off; and I waded through the long, dewy grass of the churchyard, NEAR OXFORD. 209 and tried to peep over the wall, in hopes to discover some tangible and traceable remains of the edifice. But the wall was just too high to be overlooked, and difficult to clamber over without tumbling down some of the stones ; so I took the word of one of our party, who had been here before, that there is nothing interesting on the other side. The churchyard is in rather a neglected state, and seems not to have been mown for the benefit of the par son's cow ; it contains a good many gravestones, of which I remember only some upright memorials of slate to in dividuals of the name of Tabbs. Soon a woman arrived with the key of the church- door, and we entered the simple old edifice, which has the pavement of lettered tombstones, the sturdy pillars and low arches, and other ordinary characteristics of an English country church. One or two pews, probably those of the gentlefolk of the neighborhood, were better furnished than the rest, but all in a modest style. Near the high altar, in the holiest place, there is an oblong, angular, ponderous tomb of blue marble, built against the wall, and surmounted by a carved canopy of the same material ; and over the tomb, and beneath the canopy, are two monumental brasses, such as we oftener see in laid into a church pavement. On these brasses are en graved the figures of a gentleman in armor and a lady in an antique garb, each about a foot high, devoutly kneeling in prayer ; and there is a long Latin inscription likewise cut into the enduring brass, bestowing the highest eulo gies on the character of Anthony Forster, who, with his virtuous dame, lies buried beneath this tombstone. His is the knightl} figure that kneels above ; and if Sir Wal ter Scott ever saw this tomb, he must have had an even 14 210 NEAR OXFORD. greater than common disbelief in laudatory epitaphs, to venture on depicting Anthony Forster in such hues as blacken him in the romance. For my part, I read the inscription in full faith, and believe the poor deceased gentleman to be a much-wronged individual, with good grounds for bringing an action of slander in the courts above. But the circumstance, lightly as we treat it, has its serious moral. What nonsense it is, this anxiety, which so worries us, about our good fame, or our bad fame, after death! If it were of the slightest real moment, our reputations would have been placed by Providence more in our own power, and less in other people's, than we now find them to be. If poor Anthony Forster happens to have met Sir Walter in the other world, I doubt whether he has ever thought it worth while to complain of the latter's misrepresentations. We did not remain long in the church, as it contains nothing else of interest ; and driving through the village, we passed a pretty large and rather antique-looking inn, bearing the sign of the Bear and Ragged Staff. It could not be so old, however, by at least a hundred years, as Giles Gosling's time ; nor is there any other object to remind the visitor of the Elizabethan age, unless it be a few ancient cottages, that are perhaps of still earlier date. Cumnor is not nearly so large a village, nor a place of such mark, as one anticipates from its romantic and legendary fame ; but, being still inaccessible by rail way, it has retained more of a sylvan character than we often find in English country towns. In this retired neighborhood the road is narrow and bordered with grass, and sometimes interrupted by gates ; the hedges grow in NEAR OXFORD. 2il unpruned luxuriance ; there is not that close-shaven neat ness and trimness that characterize the ordinary English landscape. The whole scene conveys the idea of seclu sion and remoteness. We met no travellers, whether on foot or otherwise. I cannot very distinctly trace out this day's peregrina tions ; but, after leaving Cumnor a few miles behind us I think we came to a ferry over the Thames, where an old woman served as ferryman, and pulled a boat across by means of a rope stretching from shore to shore. Our two vehicles being thus placed on the other side, we re sumed our drive, — first glancing, however, at the old woman's antique cottage, with its stone floor, and the cir cular settle round the kitchen fireplace, which was quite in the mediaeval English style. We next stopped at Stanton Harcourt, where we were received at the parsonage with a hospitality which we should take delight in describing, if it were allowable to make public acknowledgment of the private and personal kindnesses which we never failed to find ready for our needs. An American in an English house will soon adopt the opinion that the English are the very kindest people on earth, and will retain that idea as long, at least, as he remains on the inner side of the threshold. Their mag netism is of a kind that repels strongly while you keep beyond a certain limit, but attracts as forcibly if you get within the magic line. It was at this place, if I remember right, that I heard a gentleman ask a friend of mine whether he was the author of " The Red Letter A " ; and, after some con sideration, (for he did not seem to recognize his own book, at first, under this improved title,) our countryman 212 NEAR OXFORD. responded, doubtfully, that he believed so. The gentle man proceeded to inquire whether our friend had spent much time in America, — evidently thinking that he must have been caught young, and have had a tincture of English breeding, at least, if not birth, to speak the language so tolerably, and appear so much like other people. This insular narrowness is exceedingly queer, and of very frequent occurrence, and is quite as much a characteristic of men of education and culture as of clowns. Stan ton Harcourt is a very curious old place. It was formerly the seat of the ancient family of Harcourt, which now has its principal abode at Nuneham Courtney, a few miles off. The parsonage is a relic of the family man sion, or castle, other portions of which are close at hand ; for, across the garden, rise two gray towers, both of them picturesquely venerable, and interesting for more than their antiquity. One of these towers, in its entire capa city, from height to depth, constituted the kitchen of the ancient castle, and is still used for domestic purposes, although it has not, nor ever had, a chimney ; or we ight rather say, it is itself one vast chimney, with a hearth of thirty feet square, and a flue and aperture of the same size. There are two huge fireplaces within, and the interior walls of the tower are blackened with the smoke that for centuries used to gush forth from them and climb upward, seeking an exit through some wide air-holes in the conical roof, full seventy feet above. These lofty openings were capable of being so arranged, with reference to the wind, that the cooks are said to have been seldom troubled by the smoke ; and here, no d Dubt, they were accustomed to roast oxen whole, with as little NEAR OXFORD. 213 fuss and ado as a modern cook would roast a fowl. The inside of the tower is very dim and sombre, (being noth ing but rough stone walls, lighted only from the apertures above mentioned,) and has still a pungent odor of smoke and soot, the reminiscence of the fires and feasts of gen erations that have passed away. Methinks the extremest ange of domestic economy lies between an American jiooking-stove and the ancient, kitchen, seventy dizzy feet in height, and all one fireplace, of Stanton Harcourt. Now — the place being without a parallel in England, and therefore necessarily beyond the experience of an American — it is somewhat remarkable, that, while we stood gazing at this kitchen, I was haunted and perplexed by an idea that somewhere or other I had seen just this strange spectacle before. The height, the blackness, the dismal void, before my eyes, seemed as familiar as the decorous neatness of my grandmother's kitchen ; only my unaccountable memory of the scene was lighted up with an image of lurid fires blazing all round the dim interior circuit of the tower. I had never before had so per tinacious an attack, as I could not but suppose it, of that odd state of mind wherein we fitfully and teasingly re member some previous scene or incident, of which the one now passing appears to be but the echo and redupli cation. Though the explanation of the mystery did not for some time occur to me, I may as well conclude the matter here. In a letter of Pope's, addressed to the Duke of Buckingham, there is an account of Stanton Harcourt, (as I now find, although the name is not mentioned,) where he resided while translating a part of the " Iliad." It is one of the most admirable pieces of description in the language, — playful and picturesque, with fine 214 NEAR OXFORD. 4 touches of humorous pathos, — and conveys as perfect a picture as ever was drawn of a decayed English country house ; and among other rooms, most of which have since crumbled down and disappeared, he dashes off the grim aspect of this kitchen, — which, moreover, he peoples with witches, engaging Satan himself as head-cook, who stirs the infernal caldrons that seethe and bubble over the fires. This letter, and others relative to his abode hore, were very familiar to my earlier reading, and, remaining still fresh at the bottom of my memcry, caused the weird and ghostly sensation that came over me on beholding the real spectacle that had formerly be»n made so vivid to iny imagination. Our next visit was to the church . which stands close by, and is quite as ancient as the remiants of the castle. In a chapel or side-aisle, dedicated to the Harcourts, are found some very interesting family monuments, — and among them, recumbent on a tombstone, the figure of an armed knight of the Lancastrian party, who was slain in the Wars of the Roses. His features, dress, and armor are painted in colors, still wonderfully frosh, and there still blushes the symbol of the Red Rose, denoting the faction for which he fought and died. His be?d restr on a marble or alabaster helmet ; and on the tomb lies th<3 veritable helmet, it is to be presumed, which he wore i*» battle, — a ponderous iron case, with the visor complete, and remnants of the gilding that once covered it. The west is a large peacock, not of metal, but of wood. Very possibly, this helmet was but an heraldic adorn ment of his tomb ; and, indeed, it seems strange that it has not been stolen before now, especially in Cromwell's time, when knightly tombs were little respected, arid NEAR OXFORD. 215 when armor was in request. However, it is needless to dispute with the dead knight about the identity of his iron pot, and we may as well allow it to be the very same that so often gave him the headache in his lifetime Leaning against the wall, at the foot of the tomb, is the shaft of a spear, with a wofully tattered and utterly faded banner appended to it, — the knightly banner beneath which he marshalled his followers in the field. As it was absolutely falling to pieces, I tore off one little bit, no bigger than a finger-nail, and put it into my waistcoat- pocket; but seeking it subsequently, it was not to bo found. On the opposite side of the little chapel, two or threo yards from this tomb, is another monument, on which lie, side by side, one of the same knightly race of Harcourts, and his lady. The tradition of the family is, that this knight was the standard-bearer of Henry of Richmond in the Battle of Bosworth Field ; and a banner, sup posed to be the same that he carried, now droops over his effigy. It is just such a colorless silk rag as the one already described. The knight has the order of the Garter on his knee, and the lady wears it on her left arm, — an odd place enough for a garter ; but, if worn in its proper locality, it could not be decorously visible. The complete preservation and good condition of these Btatues, even to the minutest adornment of the sculpture, and their very noses, — the most vulnerable part of a marble man, as of a living one, — are miraculous. Ex cept in Westminster Abbey, among the chapels of the kings, I have seen none so well preserved. Perhaps they owe it to the loyalty of Oxfordshire, diffused throughout its neighborhood by the influence of the 216 NEAR OXFORD. University, during the great Civil War and the rule of the Parliament. It speaks well, too, for the upright and kindly character of this old family, that the peasantry, among whom they had lived for ages, did not desecrate their tombs, when it might have been done with im punity. There are other and more recent memorials of the Harcourts, one of which is the tomb of the last lord, who died about a hundred years ago. His figure, like those of his ancestors, lies on the top of his tomb, clad, not in armor, but in his robes as a peer. The title is now extinct, but the family survives in a younger branch, and still holds this patrimonial estate, though they hav^ long since quitted it as a residence. We next went to see the ancient fish-ponds appertain ing to the mansion, and which used to be of vast dietary importance to the family in Catholic times, and when fish was not otherwise attainable. There are two or three, or more, of these reservoirs, one of \vhich is of very respectable size, — large enough, indeed, to be really a picturesque object, with its grass-green borders, and the trees drooping over it, and the towers of the castle and the church reflected within the weed-grown depths of its smooth mirror. A sweet fragrance, as it were, of ancient time and present quiet and seclusion was breathing all around ; the sunshine of to-day had a mellow charm of antiquity in its brightness. These ponds are said still to breed abundance of such fish as love deep and quiet waters : but I saw only some minnows, and one or two snakes, which \vere lying among the weeds on the top of the water, sunning and bathing themselves at once. I mentioned that there were two towers remaining of NEAR OXFORD. 217 the old castle : the one containing the kitchen we have already visited ; the other, still more interesting, is next to be described. It is some seventy feet high, gray and reverend, but in excellent repair, thougli I could not perceive that anything had been done to renovate it The basement story was once the family chapel, and is, of course, still a consecrated spot. At one corner of tho tower is a circular turret, within which a narrow stair case, with worn steps of stone, winds round and round as ft climbs upward, giving access to a chamber on each floor, and finally emerging on the battlemented roof. Ascending this turret-stair, and arriving at the third story, we entered a chamber, not large, though occupy ing the whole area of the tower, and lighted by a win dow on each side. It was wainscoted from floor to ceil ing with dark oak, and had a little fireplace in one of the corners. The window-panes were small and set in lead. The curiosity of this room is, that it was once the resi dence of Pope, and that he here wrote a considerable part of the translation of Homer, and likewise, no doubt, tho admirable letters to which I have referred above. The room once contained a record by himself, scratched with a diamond on one of the window-panes, (since removed for safekeeping to Nuneham Courtney, where it was shown me,) purporting that he had here finished the fifth book of the " Iliad " on such a day. A poet has a fragrance about him, such as no other human being is gifted withal ; it is indestructible, and clings forevermore to everything that he has touched. I was not impressed, at Blenheim, with any sense that the mighty Duke still haunted the palace that was created for him -, but here, after a century and a half, we are still con- 218 NEAR OXFORD. scions of the presence of that decrepit little figure of Queen Anne's time, although he was merely a casual guest in the old tower, during one or two summer months. How ever brief the time and slight the connection, his spirit cannot be exorcised so long as the tower stands. In my mind, moreover, Pope, or any other person with an avail able claim, is right in adhering to the spot, dead or alive for I never saw a chamber that I should like better to inhabit, — so comfortably small, in such a safe and .inac cessible seclusion, and with a varied landscape from each window. One of them looks upon the church, close at hand, and down into the green churchyard, extending almost to the foot of the tower ; the others have views wide and far, over a gently undulating tract of country. If desirous of a loftier elevation, about a dozen more steps of the turret-stair will bring the occupant to the summit of the tower, — where Pope used to come, no doubt, in the summer evenings, and peep — poor little shrimp that he was ! — through the embrasures of the battlement. From Stanton Harcourt we drove — I forget how far — to a point where a boat was waiting for us upon the Thames, or some other stream ; for I am ashamed to con fess my ignorance of the precise geographical wherea bout. We were, at any rate, some miles above Oxford, and, I should imagine, pretty near one of the sources of England's mighty river. It was little more than wide enough for the boat, with extended oars, to pass, — shal low, too, and bordered with bulrushes and water-weeds, which, in some places, quite overgrew the surface of the river from bank to bank. The shores were flat and meadow-like, and sometimes, the boatman told us, are NEAR OXFORD. 219 ovtrflcwed by the rise of the stream. The water looked clean aiid pure, but not particularly transparent, though enough so to show us that the bottom is very much weed- grown ; and I was told that the weed is an American production, brought to England with importations of timber, and now threatening to choke up the Thames and other English rivers. 1 wonder it does not try its obstructive powers upon the Merrimack, the Connecticut, or the Hudson, — not to speak of the St. Lawrence or the Mississippi ! It was an open boat, with cushioned seats astern, com fortably accommodating our party; the day continued sunny and warm, and perfectly still ; the boatman, well trained to his business, managed the oars skilfully and vigorously ; and we went down the stream quite as swiftly as it was desirable to go, the scene being so pleasant, and the passing hours so thoroughly agreeable. The river grew a little wider and deeper, perhaps, as we glided on, but was still an inconsiderable stream : for it had a good deal more than a hundred miles to meander through before it should bear fleets on its bosom, aid reflect pal aces and towers and Parliament houses and dingy and sordid piles of various structure, as it rolled to and fro with the tide, dividing London asunder. Not, in truth, that I ever saw any edifice whatever reflected in its tur bid breast, when the sylvan stream, as we beheld it now is swollen into the Thames at London. Once, on our voyage, we had to land, while the boat^ man and some other persons drew our skiff round some rapids, which we could not otherwise have passed ; an other time, the boat went through a lock. We, mean while, stepped ashore to examine the ruins of the old 220 NEAR OXFORD. nunnery of Godstowe, where Fair Rosamond seoluded herself, after being separated from her royal lover There is a long line of ruinous wall, and a shattered tower at one of the angles ; the whole much ivy-grown, — brim ming over, indeed, with clustering ivy, which is rooted inside of the walls. The nunnery is now, I believe, held in lease by the city of Oxford, which has converted its precincts into a barnyard. The gate was under lock and key, so that we could merely look at the outside, and soon resumed our places in the boat. At three o'clock, or thereabouts, (or sooner or later, — for I took little heed of time, and only wished that these delightful wanderings might last forever,) we reached Folly Bridge, at Oxford. Here we took possession of a spacious barge, with a house in it, and a comfortable dining-room or drawing-room within the house, and a level roof, on which we could sit at ease, or dance, if so inclined. These barges are common at Oxford, — some very splendid ones being owned by the students of the different colleges, or by clubs. They are drawn by horses, like canal-boats ; and a horse being attached to our own barge, he trotted off at a reasonable pace, and we slipped through the water behind him, with a gentle and pleasant motion, which, save for the constant vicissi tude of cultivated scenery, was like no motion at all. It was life without the trouble of living ; nothing was ever more quietly agreeable. In this happy state of mind and body we gazed at Christ-Church meadows, as we passed, and at the receding spires and towers of Oxford, and on a good deal of pleasant variety along the banks: young men rowing or fishing ; troops of naked boys bathing, as if this were Arcadia, in the simplicity of the NEAR OXFORD. 221 Golden Age ; country houses, cottages, water-side inns, all with something fresh about them, as not being sprin kled with the dust of the highway. We were a large, party now ; for a number of additional guests had joined us at Folly Bridge, and we comprised poets, novelists, scholars, sculptors, painters, architects, men and women of renown, dear friends, genial, outspoken, open-hearted Englishmen, — all voyaging onward together, like tho wise ones of Gotham in a bowl. I remember not a sin gle annoyance, except, indeed, that a swarm of wasps came aboard of us and alighted on the head of one of our young gentlemen, attracted by the scent of the po matum which he had been rubbing into his hair. He was the only victim, and his small trouble the one little flaw in our day's felicity, to put us in mind that we were mortal. Meanwhile a table had been laid in the interior of our barge, and spread with cold ham, cold fowl, cold pigeon- pie, cold beef, and other substantial cheer, such as the English love, and Yankees too, — besides tarts, and cakes, and pears, and plums, — not forgetting, of course, a goodly provision of port, sherry, and champagne, and bitter ale, which is like mother's milk to an Englishman, and soon grows equally acceptable to his American cousin. By the time these matters had been properly attended to, we had arrived at that part of the Thames which passes by Nuneham Courtney, a fine estate be longing to the Harcourts, and the present residence of the family. Here we landed, and, climbing a steep slope from the riverside, paused a moment or two to look at an architectural object, called the Carfax, the purport of which I do not well understand. Thence we proceeded 222 NEAR OXFORD. onward, through the loveliest park and woodland scenery I ever saw, and under as beautiful a declining sunshine as heaven ever shed over earth, to the stately mansion- house. As we here cross a private threshold, it is not alloAv- able to pursue my feeble narrative of this delightful day with the same freedom as heretofore ; so, perhaps, I may as well bring it to a close. I may mention, however, that I saw the library, a fine, large apartment, hung round with portraits of eminent literary men, principally of the last century, most of whom were familiar guests of the Harcourts. The house itself is about eighty years old, and is built in the classic style, as if the family had been anxious to diverge as far as possible from the Gothic picturesqueness of their old abode at Stanton Harcourt. The grounds were laid out in part by Capability Brown, and seemed to me even more beautiful than those of Blenheim. Mason the poet, a friend of the house, gave the design of a portion of the garden. Of the whole place I will not be niggardly of my rude Transatlantic praise, but be bold to say that it appeared to me as per fect as anything earthly can be, — utterly and entirely finished, as if the years and generations had done all that the hearts and minds of the successive owners could con trive for a spot they dearly loved. Such homes as Nune- ham Courtney are among the splendid results of long hereditary possession ; and we Republicans, whose house holds melt away like new-fallen snow in a spring morn ing, must content ourselves with our many counterbalan cing advantages, — for this one, so apparently desirable to the far-projecting selfishness of our nature, we are certain never to attain. NEAR OXFORD. 223 It must not be supposed, nevertheless, that Nuneham Courtney is one of the great show-places of England. It is merely a fair specimen of the better class of country- seats, and has a hundred rivals, and many superiors, in the features of beauty, and expansive, manifold, redun dant comfort, which most impressed me. A moderate man might be content with such a home, — that is all. And now I take leave of Oxford without even ao attempt to describe it, — there being no literary faculty, attainable or conceivable by me, which can avail to put it adequately, or even tolerably, upon paper. It must remain its own sole expression ; and those whose sad for tune it may be never to behold it have no better resource than to dream about gray, weather-stained, ivy-grown edifices, wrought with quaint Gothic ornament, and stand ing around grassy quadrangles, where cloistered walks liave echoed to the quiet footsteps of twenty generations, • — lawns and gardens of luxurious repose, shadowed with canopies of foliage, and lit up with sunny glimpses through archways of great boughs, — spires, towers, and turrets, each with its history and legend, — dimly mag- wificent chapels, with painted windows of rare beauty and brilliantly diversified hues, creating an atmosphere of richest gloom, — vast college-halls, high-windowed, oaken- panelled, and hung round with portraits of the men, in every age, whom the University has nurtured to be illustrious, — long vistas of alcoved libraries, where the wisdom and learned folly of all time is shelved, — kitch ens, (we throw in this feature by way of ballast, and because it would not be English Oxford without its beef and beer,) with huge fireplaces, capable of roasting a hundred joints at once, — and cavernous cellars, where 224 NEAR OXFORD. rows of piled-up hogsheads seethe and fume with that mighty malt-liquor which is the true milk of Alma Ma ter : make all these things vivid in your dream, and you will never know nor believe how inadequate is the result to represent even the merest outside of Oxford. We feel a genuine reluctance to conclude this article without making our grateful acknowledgments, by name, to a gentleman whose overflowing kindness was the main condition of all our sight-seeings and enjoyments. De lightful as will always be our recollection of Oxford and its neighborhood, we partly suspect that it owes much of its happy coloring to the genial medium through which the objects were presented to us, — to the kindly magic of a hospitality unsurpassed, within our experience, in the quality of making the guest contented with his host, with himself, and everything about him. He has insep arably mingled his image with our remembrance of the Spires of Oxford. SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS, WE left Carlisle at a little past eleven, and within the half-hour were at Gretna Green. Thence we rushed onward into Scotland through a flat and dreary tract of country, consisting mainly of desert and bog, where prob ably the moss-troopers were accustomed to take refuge after their raids into England. Anon, however, the hills hove themselves up to view, occasionally attaining a height which might almost be called mountainous. In about two hours we reached Dumfries, and alighted at the station there. Chill as the Scottish summer is reputed to be, we found it an awfully hot day, not a whit less so than the day before ; but we sturdily adventured through the burn ing sunshine up into the town, inquiring our way to the residence of Burns. The street leading from the station is called Shakspeare Street ; and at its farther extremity we read " Burns Street" on a corner-house, — the avenue thus designated having been formerly known as " Mill Hole Brae." It is a vile lane, paved with small, hard stones from side to side, and bordered by cottages or mean houses of whitewashed stone, joining one to an other along the whole length of the street. With not a tree, of course, or a blade of glass between the paving- stones, the narrow lane was as hot as Tophet, and reeked 226 SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. with a genuine Scotch odor, being infested with unwashed children, and altogether in a state of chronic filth ; al though some women seemed to be hopelessly scrubbing the thresholds of their wretched dwellings. I never saw an outskirt of a town less fit for a poet's residence, or in which it would be more miserable for any man of cleanly predilections to spend his days. We asked for Burns's dwelling; and a woman pointed across the street to a two-story house, built of stone, and whitewashed, like its neighbors, but perhaps of a little more respectable aspect than most of them, though I hesitate in saying so. It was not a separate structure, but under the same continuous roof with the next. There was an inscription on the door, bearing no refer ence to Burns, but indicating that the house was now occupied by a ragged or industrial school. On knocking, we were instantly admitted by a servant-girl, who smiled intelligently when we told our errand, and showed us into a low and very plain parlor, not more than twelve or fifteen feet square. A young woman, who seemed to be a teacher in the school, soon appeared, and told us that this had been Burns's usual sitting-room, and that he had written many of his songs here. She then led us up a narrow staircase into a little bed chamber over the parlor. Connecting with it, there is a very small room, or windowed closet, which Burns used us a study ; and the bedchamber itself was the ope where he slept in his later lifetime, and in which he died at last. Altogether, it is an exceedingly unsuitable place for a pastoral and rural poet to live or die in, — even more unsatisfactory than Shakspeare's house, which has a certain homely picturesqueness that contrasts favor SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS 227 ably with the suburban sordidness of the abode before us. The narrow lane, the paving-stones, and the contiguity of wretched hovels are depressing to remember ; and the steam of them (such is our human weakness) might almost make the poet's memory less fragrant. As already observed, it was an intolerably hot day. After leaving the house, we found our way into the prin cipal street of the town, which, it may be fair to say, ia of very different aspect from the wretched outskirt above described. Entering a hotel, (in which, as a Dumfries guide-book assured us, Prince Charles Edward had once spent a night,) we rested and refreshed ourselves, and then set forth in quest of the mausoleum of Burns. Coming to St. Michael's Church, we saw a man dig ging a grave , and, scrambling out of the hole, he let us into the churchyard, which was crowded full of monu ments. Their general shape and construction are pecu liar to Scotland, being a perpendicular tablet of marble or other stone, within a framework of the same material, somewhat resembling the frame of a looking-glass ; and, all over the churchyard, these sepulchral memorials rise to the height of ten, fifteen, or twenty feet, forming quite an imposing collection of monuments, but inscribed with names of small general significance. It was easy, indeed, to ascertain the rank of those who slept below ; for in Scotland it is the custom to put the occupation of the buried personage (as " Skinner," " Shoemaker," " Flesh-' er") on his tombstone. As another peculiarity, wives are buried under their maiden names, instead of those of their husbands ; thus giving a disagreeable impression that the married pair have bidden each other an eternal farewell on the edge of the grave. 228 SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. There was a footpath through this crowded church yard, sufficiently well worn to guide us to the grave of Burns ; but a woman followed behind us, who, it ap peared, kept the key of the mausoleum, and was privi leged to show it to strangers. The monument is a sort of Grecian temple, with pilasters and a dome, covering a space of about twenty feet square. It was formerly open to all the inclemencies of the Scotch atmosphere, but is now protected and shut in by large squares of rough glass, each pane being of the size of one whole side of the structure. The woman unlocked the door, and ad mitted us into the interior. Inlaid into the floor of the mausoleum is the gravestone of Burns, — the very same that was laid over his grave by Jean Armour, before this monument was built. Displayed against the surrounding wall is a marble statue of Burns at the plough, with the Genius of Caledonia summoning the ploughman to turn poet. Methought it was not a very successful piece of work ; for the plough was better sculptured than the man, and the man, though heavy and cloddish, was more effective than the goddess. Our guide informed us that an old man of ninety, who knew Burns, certifies this statue to be very like the original. The bones of the poet, and of Jean Armour, and of some of their children, lie in the vault over which we stood. Our guide (who was intelligent, in her own plain way, and very agreeable to talk withal) said that the vault was opened about three weeks ago, on occasion of the burial of the eldest son of Burns. The poet's bones were disturbed, and the dry skull, once so brimming over with powerful thought and bright and tender fantasies, was taken away, and kept for several days by a Dumfries SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BIJRXS. 229 doctor. It has since been deposited in a new leaden coffin, and restored to the vault. We learned that there is a surviving daughter of Burns's eldest son, and daugh ters likewise of the two younger sons, — and, besides these, an illegitimate posterity by the eldest son, who appears to have been of disreputable life in his younger days. He inherited his father's failings, with some faint shadow, I have also understood, of the great qualities which have made the world tender of his father's vices and weaknesses. We listened readily enough to this paltry gossip, but found that it robbed the poet's memory of some of the reverence that was its due. Indeed, this talk over his grave had very much the same tendency and effect as the home-scene of his life, which we had been visit ing just previously. Beholding his poor, mean dwelling and its surroundings, and picturing his outward life and earthly manifestations from these, one does not so much wonder that the people of that day should have failed to recognize all that was admirable and immortal in a dis reputable, drunken, shabbily clothed, and shabbily housed man, consorting with associates of damaged character, and, as his only ostensible occupation, gauging the whiskey, which he too often tasted. Siding with Burns, as we needs must, in his plea against the world, let us try to do the world a little justice too. It is far easier to know and honor a poet when his fame has taken shape in the spotlessness of marble than when the actual man comes staggering before you, besmeared with the sordid stains of his daily life. For my part, I chiefly wonder that his recognition dawned so brightly while he was still living. There must have been something very grand in his im 230 SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. mediate presence, some strangely impressive characteris tic in his natural behavior, to have caused him to seem like a demigod so soon. As we went back through the churchyard, we saw a spot where nearly four hundred inhabitants of Dumfries were buried during the cholera year ; and also some curi ous old monuments, with raised letters, the inscriptions on which were not sufficiently legible to induce us to puzzle them out ; but, I believe, they mark the resting-places of old Covenanters, some of whom were killed by Cluver- house and his fellow-ruffians. St. Michael's Church is of red freestone, and was built about a hundred years ago, on an old Catholic foundation. Our guide admitted us into it, and showed us, in the porch, a very pretty little marble figure of a child asleep, with a drapery over the lower part, from beneath which appeared its two baby feet. It was truly a sweet little statue ; and the woman told us that it represented a child of the sculptor, and that the baby (here still in its marble infancy) had died more than twenty-six years ago. " Many ladies," she said, " especially such as had ever lost a child, had shed tears over it." It was very pleasant to think of the sculptor bestowing the best of his genius and art to re-create his tender child in stone, and to make the representation as soft and sweet as the original ; but the conclusion of the story has something that jars with our awakened sensibilities. A gentleman from London had Been the statue, and was so much delighted with it that he bought it of the father-artist, after it had lain above a quarts of a century in the church-porch. So this was not the real, tender image that came out of the Other's heart; he had sold that truest one for a him- SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 231 cL \ guineas, and 3ctilptored this mere copy to replace it. Tkc first figure was entirely naked in its earthly and spiritual innocence. The copy, as I have said above, has a drapery over the lower limbs. But, after all, if wo come to the truth of the matter, the sleeping baby may be as fitly reposited in the drawing-room of a connoisseur as in a cold and dreary church-porch. We went into the church, and found it very plain and naked, without altar-decorations, and having its floor quite covered with unsightly wooden pews. The woman led us to a pew cornering on one of the side-aisles, and, telling us that it used to be Burns's family-pew, showed us his seat, which is in the corner by the aisle. It is so situated, that a sturdy pillar hid him from the pulpit, and from the minister's eye ; " for Robin was no great friends with the ministers," said she. This touch — his seat behind the pillar, and Burns himself nodding in sermon-time, or keenly observant of profane things — brought him before us to the life. In the corner-seat of the next pew, right before Burns, and not more than two feet off, sat the young lady on whom the poet saw that unmentionable parasite which he has immortalized in song. We were ungenerous enough to ask the lady's name, but the good woman could not tell it. This was the last thing which we saw in Dumfries worthy of record ; and it ought to be noted that our guide refused some money which my companion offered her, because I had already paid her what she deemed sufficient. At the railway station we spent more than a weary hour, waiting for the train, which at last came up, and took us to Mauchline. We got into an omnibus, the only wnveyance to be had, and drove about a mile to the vit xM2 SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. lage, where we established ourselves at the Loudoun Hotel, one of the veriest country inns which we have found in Great Britain. The town of Mauchline, a place more redolent of Burns than almost any other, consists of a street or two of contiguous cottages, mostly white washed, and with thatched roofs. It has nothing sylvan or rural in the immediate village, and is as ugly a place u» mortal man could contrive to make, or to render uglier through a succession of untidy generations. The fashion of paving the village street, and patching one shabby house on the gable-end of another, quite shuts out all verdure and pleasantness ; but, I presume, we are not likely to see a more genuine old Scotch village, such as they used to be in Burns's time, and long before, than this of Mauchline. The church stands about midway up the Btreet, and is built of red freestone, very simple in its architecture, with a square tower and pinnacles. In this sacred edifice, and its churchyard, was the scene of one of Burns's most characteristic productions, "The Holy Fair." Almost directly opposite its gate, across the village street, stands Posie Nansie's inn, where the " Jolly Beg gars " congregated. The latter is a t\vo-story, red-stone, thatched house, looking old, but by no means venerable, like a drunken patriarch. It has small, old-fashioned windows, and may well have stood for centuries, — though, seventy or eighty years ago, when Burns was conversant with it, I should fancy it might have been something better than a beggars' alehouse. The whole town of Mauchline looks rusty and time-worn, — even the newer houses, of which there are several, being shad owed and darkened by the general aspect of the plae*?. SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS'. 233 When we arrived, all the wretched little dwellings seemed to have belched forth their inhabitants into the warm Bummer evening ; everybody was chatting with every body, on the most familiar terms ; the bare-legged chil dren gambolled or quarrelled uproariously, and came freely, moreover, and looked into the window of our par lor. When we ventured out, we were followed by the gaze of the old town : people standing in their doorways, old women popping their heads from the chamber-win dows, and stalwart men — idle on Saturday at e'en, after their week's hard labor — clustering at the street-corners, merely to stare at our unpretending selves. Except in Borne remote little town of Italy, (where, besides, the inhabitants had the intelligible stimulus of beggary,) I have never been honored with nearly such an amount of public notice. The next forenoon my companion put me to shame by attending church, after vainly exhorting me to do the like ; and, it being Sacrament Sunday, and my poor friend be ing wedged into the farther end of a closely filled pew, he was forced to stay through the preaching of four sev eral sermons, and came back perfectly exhausted and des perate. He was somewhat consoled, however, on finding that he had witnessed a spectacle of Scotch manners identical with that of Burns's " Holy Fair," on the very spot where the poet located that immortal description. By way of further conformance to the customs of the country, we ordered a sheep's head and the broth, and did penance accordingly ; and at five o'clock we took a fly, and set out for Burns's farm of Moss Giel. Moss Giel is not more than a mile from Mauchline, and the road extends over a high ridge of land, with ji 234: SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. view of far hills and green slopes on either side. Just before we reached the farm, the driver stopped to point out a hawthorn, growing by the wayside, which he said was Burns's " Lousie Thorn ; " and I devoutly plucked a branch, although I have really forgotten where or how this illustrious shrub has been celebrated. We then turned into a rude gateway, and almost immediately came to the farm-house of Moss Giel, standing some fifty yards removed from the high-road, behind a tall hedge of hawthorn, and considerably overshadowed by trees. The house is a whitewashed stone cottage, like thousands of others in England and Scotland, with a thatched roof, on which grass and weeds have intruded a picturesque, though alien growth. There is a door and one window in front, besides another little window that peeps out among the thatch. Close by the cottage, and extending back at right angles from it, so as to inclose the farm yard, are two other "mildings of the same size, shape, and general appearance as the house : any one of the three looks just as fit for a human habitation as the two others, and all three look still more suitable for donkey-stables and pigsties. As we drove into the farm-yard, bounded on three sides by these three hovels, a large dog began to bark at us ; and some women and children made their appearance, but seemed to demur about admitting us, because the master and mistress were very religious people, and had not yet come back from the Sacrament at Mauchline. However, it would not do to be turned back from the very threshold of Robert Burns ; and as the women permed to be merely straggling visitors, and nobody, at all events, had a right to send us away, we went into the SOME OF T1IZ HAUNTS OF BURNS. 235 back-door, and, turning to the right, entered a kitchen. It showed a deplorable lack of housewifely neatness, and in it there were three or four children, one of whom, a girl eight or nine years old, held a baby in her arms. She proved to be the daughter of the people of the house, and gave us what leave she could to look about us. Thence we stepped across the narrow mid-passage of the cottage into the only other apartment below-stairs, a sitting-room, where we found a young man eating bread and cheese. He informed us that he did not live there, and had only called in to refresh himself on his way home from church. This room, like the kitchen, was a noticeably poor one, and, besides being all that the cottage had to show for a parlor, it was a sleeping-apartment, having two beds, which might be curtained off, on occasion. The young man allowed us liberty (so far as in him lay) to go up stairs. Up we crept, accordingly ; and a few steps brought us to the top of the staircase, over the kitchen, where we found the wretchedest little sleeping-chamber in the world, with a sloping roof under the thatch, and two beds spread upon the bare floor. This, most prob ably, was Burns's rh amber ; or, perhaps, it may have been that of his mother's servant-maid ; and, in either case, this rude floor, at one time or another, must have creaked beneath the poet's midnight tread. On the oppo site side of the passage was the door of another atti chamber, opening which, I saw a considerable numbei of cheeses on the floor. The whole house was pervaded with a frowzy smell, and also a dunghill odor ; and it is not easy to understand now the atmosphere of such a dwelling can be any more o* salubrious morally than it appeared to bo 236 .SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. physically. No virgin, surely, could keep a holy awe about her while stowed higgledy-piggledy with coarse- natured rustics into this narrowness and filth. Such a habitation is calculated to make beasts of men and women ; and it indicates a degree of barbarism which I did not Imagine to exist in Scotland, that a tiller of broad fields, ii*e the former of Mauchline, should have his abode in a pigsty. It is sad to think of anybody — not to say a poet, but any human being — sleeping, eating, thinking, praying, and spending all his home-life in this miser able hovel ; but, methinks, I never in the least knew how to estimate the miracle of Burns's genius, nor his heroic merit for being no worse man, until I thus learned the squalid hindrances amid which he developed himself. Space, a free atmosphere, and cleanliness have a vast deal to do with the possibilities of human virtue. The biographers talk of the farm of Moss Giel as being damp and unwholesome ; but I do not see why, outside of the cottage walls, it should possess so evil a reputation. It occupies a high, broad ridge, enjoying, surely, what ever benefit can come of a breezy site, and sloping far downward before any marshy soil is reached. The high hedge, and the trees that stand beside the cottage, give it a pleasant aspect enough to one who does not know the grimy secrets of the interior ; and the summer afternoon was now so bright that I shall remember the scene witli a great deal of sunshine over it. Leaving the cottage, we drove through a field, which the driver told us was that in which Burns turned up the mouse's nest. It is the inclosure nearest to the cottage and seems now to be a pasture, and a rathor remark SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 237 ably unfertile one. A little farther on, the ground waa whitened with an immense number of daisies, — daisies, daisies everywhere ; and in answer to my inquiry, the driver said that this was the field where Burns ran his ploughshare over the daisy. If so, the soil seems to have been consecrated to daisies by the song which he bestowed on that first immortal one. I alighted, and plucked a whole handful of these "wee, modest, crimson-tipped flowers," which will be precious to many friends in our own country as coming from Burns's farm, and being of the same race and lineage as that daisy which he turned into an amaranthine flower while seeming to de stroy it. From Moss Giel we drove through a variety of pleas ant scenes, some of which were familiar to us by their connection with Burns. We skirted, too, along a portion of the estate of Auchinleck, which still belongs to the Boswell family, — the present possessor being Sir James Boswell,* a grandson of Johnson's friend, and son of the Sir Alexander who was killed in a duel. Our driver spoke of Sir James as a kind, free-hearted man, but addicted to horse-races and similar pastimes, and a little too familiar with the wine-cup ; so that poor Bozzy's booziness would appear to have become hereditary in his ancient line. There is no male heir to the estate of Auchinleck. The portion of the lands which we saw is covered with wood and much undermined wit! rabbit-warrens ; nor, though the territory extends over a large number of acres, is the income very consider able. By and by we came to the spot where Burns saw Miss * Sir James Boswell is now dead. 238 SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. Alexander, the Lass of Ballochmyle. It was on a bridge, which (or, more probably, a bridge that has succeeded to the old one, and is made of iron) crosses from bank to bank, high in air, over a deep gorge of the road ; so that the young lady may have appeared to Burns like a crea ture between earth and sky, and compounded chiefly of celestial elements But, in honest truth, the great charm of a woman, in Burns's eyes, was always her womanhood, and not the angelic mixture which other poets find in her. Our driver pointed out the course taken by the Lass of Ballochmyle, through the shrubbery, to a rock on the banks of the Lugar, where it seems to be the tradition that Burns accosted her. The song implies no such inter view. Lovers, of whatever condition, high or low, could desire no lovelier scene in which to breathe their vows : the river flowing over its pebbly bed, sometimes gleaming into the sunshine, sometimes hidden deep in verdure, and here and there eddying at the foot of high and precipitous cliffs. This beautiful estate of Ballochmyle is still held by the family of Alexanders, to whom Burns's song has given renown on cheaper terms than any other set of people ever attained it. How slight the tenure seems ! A young lady happened to walk out, one summer after noon, and crossed the path of a neighboring farmer, who celebrated the little incident in four or five warm, rude, — at least, not refined, though rather ambitious, — and Bomcwlmt ploughman-like verses. Burns has written hundreds of better things ; but henceforth, for centuries, that maiden has free admittance into the dream-land of Beautiful AYomen, and she and all her race are famous . I should like to know the present head of the family, and SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 239 ascertain what value, if any, the members of it put upon the celebrity thus won. We passed through Catrine, known hereabouts as " the clean village of Scotland." Certainly, as regards the point indicated, it has greatly the advantage of Mauch- line, whither we now returned without seeing anything else worth writing about. There was a rain-storm during the night, and. in the morning, the rusty, old, sloping street of Mauchline was glistening with wet, while frequent showers came spatter ing down. The intense heat of many days past was ex changed for a chilly atmosphere, much more suitable to a stranger's idea of what Scotch temperature ought to be. We found, after breakfast, that the first train northward had already gone by, and that we must wait till nearly two o'clock for the next. I merely ventured out once, during the forenoon, and took a brief walk through the village, in which I have left little to describe. Its chief business appears to be the manufacture of snuff-boxes. There are perhaps five or six shops, or more, including those licensed to sell only tea and tobacco ; the best of them have the characteristics of village stores in the United States, dealing in a small way with an extensive variety of articles. I peeped into the open gateway of the churchyard, and saw that the ground was absolutely stuffed with dead people, and the surface crowded with gravestones, both perpendicular and horizontal. All Burns's old Mauchline acquaintance are doubtless there, and the Armours among them, except Bonny Jean, who sleeps by her poet's side. The family of Armour is now extinct in Mauchline. Arriving at the railway station, we found a tall, elderly, 240 SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. comely gentleman walking to and fro and waiting for the train. He proved to be a Mr. Alexander, — it may fairly be presumed the Alexander of Ballochmyle, a blood rela tion of the lovely lass. Wonderful efficacy of a poet's verse, that could shed a glory from Long Ago on this old gentleman's white hair ! These Alexanders, by the by, are not an old family on the Ballochmyle estate ; the father of the lass having made a fortune in trade, and established himself as the first landed proprietor of his name in these parts. The original family was named Whitefoord. Our ride to Ayr presented nothing very remarkable ; and, indeed, a cloudy and rainy day takes the varnish off the scenery, and causes a woful diminution in the beauty and impressiveness of everything we see. Much of our way lay along a flat, sandy level, in a southerly direction. We reached Ayr in the midst of hopeless rain, and drove to the King's Arms Hotel. In the intervals of showers I took peeps at the town, which appeared to have many modern or modern-fronted edifices ; although there are likewise tall, gray, gabled, and quaint-looking houses in the by-streets, here and there, betokening an ancient place. The town lies on both sides .of the Ayr, which is hero broad and stately, and bordered with dwellings that look from their windows directly down into the passing tide. I crossed the river by a modern and handsome stone bridge, and recrossed it, at no great distance, by a vener able structure of four gray arches, which must have be stridden the stream ever since the early days of Scottish history. These are the " Two Briggs of Ayr," whose midnight conversation was overheard by Burns, while SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 241 other auditors were aware only of the rush and nimble of the wintry stream among the arches. The ancient bridge is steep and narrow, and paved like a street, and defended by a parapet of red freestone, except at the two ends, where some mean old shops allow scanty room for the pathway to creep between. Nothing else im pressed me hereabouts, unless I mention, that, during the rain, the women and girls went about the streets of Ayr barefooted to save their shoes. The next morning wore a lowering aspect, as if it felt itself destined to be one of many consecutive days of storm. After a good Scotch breakfast, however, of fresh herrings and eggs, we took a fly, and started at a little past ten for the banks of the Doon. On our way, at about two miles from Ayr, we drew up at a roadside cot tage, on which was an inscription to the effect that Robert Burns was born within its walls. It is now a public- house ; and, of course, we alighted and entered its little sitting-room, which, as we at present see it, is a neat apartment, with the modern improvement of a ceiling. The walls are much overscribbled with names of visitors, and the wooden door of a cupboard in the wainscot, as well as all the other wood-work of the room, is cut and carved with initial letters. So, likewise, are two tables, which, having received a coat of varnish over the inscrip tions, form really curious and interesting articles of fur niture. I have seldom (though I do not personally adopt this mode of illustrating my humble name) felt inclined to ridicule the natural impulse of most people thus to record themselves at the shrines of poets and heroes. On a pane1 Jet into the wall in a corner of the room, ia 16 242 SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. a portrait of Burns, copied from the original picture bj Nasmyth. The floor of this apartment is of boards, which are probably a recent substitute for the ordinary flag-stones of a peasant's cottage. There is but one other room pertaining to the genuine birthplace of Robert Burns : it is the kitchen, into which we now went. It has a floor of flag-stones, even ruder than those of Shak- gpeare's house, — though, perhaps, not so strangely cracked and broken as the latter, over which the hoof of Satan himself might seem to have been trampling. A new window has been opened through the wall, towards the road ; but on the opposite side is the little original win dow, of only four small panes, through which came the first daylight that shone upon the Scottish poet. At the side of the room, opposite the fireplace, is a recess, con taining a bed, which can be hidden by curtains. In that humble nook, of all places in the world, Providence was pleased to deposit the germ of the richest human life which mankind then had within its circumference. These two rooms, as I have said, make up the whole sum and substance of Burns's birthplace : for there were no chambers, nor even attics ; and the thatched roof formed the only ceiling of kitchen and sitting-room, the height of which was that of the whole house. The cot tage, however, is attached to another edifice of the same size and description, as these little habitations often are ; and, moreover, a splendid addition has been made to it, since the poet's renown began to draw visitors to the way side ale-house. The old woman of the house led us through an entry, and showed a vaulted hall, of no vast dimensions, to be sure, but marvellously large and splen did as compared with what might be anticipated from the SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 243 Dut-vvard aspect of the cottage. It contained a bust of Burns, and \vas hung round with pictures and engravings, principally illustrative of his life and poems. In this part of the house, too, there is a parlor, fragrant with tobacco-smoke ; and, no doubt, many a noggin of whiskey is here quaffed to the memory of the bard, who professed to draw so much inspiration from that potent liquor. We bought some engravings of Kirk Alloway, the Bridge of Doon, and the monument, and gave the old woman a fee besides, and took our leave. A very short drive farther brought us within sight of the monument, and to the hotel, situated close by the entrance of the ornamental grounds within which the former is enclosed. We rang the bell at the gate of the enclosure, but were forced to wait a considerable time ; because the old man, the regular superintendent of the spot, had gone to assist at the laying of the corner-stone of a new kirk. Pie appeared anon, and admitted us, but immediately hurried uway to be present at the concluding ceremonies, leaving us locked up with Burns. The enclosure around the monument is beautifully laid out as an ornamental garden, and abundantly provided with rare flowers and shrubbery, all tended with loving care. The monument stands on an elevated site, and consists of a massive basement-story, three-sided, above which rises a light and elegant Grecian temple, — a mere dome, supported on Corinthian pillars, and open to all the winds. The edifice is beautiful in itself; though I know not what peculiar appropriateness it may have, as the memorial of a Scottish rural poet. The door of the basement story stood open ; and, en lering, we saw a bust of Burns in a niche, looking keener, 244. SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. more refined, but not so warm and whole-souled as his pictures usually do. I think the likeness cannot be good. In the centre of the room stood a glass case, in which were reposited the two volumes of the little Pocket- Bible that Burns gave to Highland Mary, when they pledged their troth to one another. It is poorly printed, on coarse paper. A verse of Scripture, referring to the solemnity and awfulness of vows, is written within the cover of each volume, in the poet's own hand ; and fastened to one of the covers is a lock of Highland Mary's golden hair. This Bible had been carried to America by one of her relatives, but was sent back to be fitly treasured here. There is a staircase within the monument, by which we ascended to the top, and had a view of both Briggs of Doon ; the scene of Tarn O'Shanter's misadventure being close at hand. Descending, we wandered through the enclosed garden, and came to a little building in a corner, on entering which, we found the two statues of Tarn and Sutor Wat, — ponderous stone-work enough, yet permeated in a remarkable degree with living warmth and jovial hilarity. From this part of the garden, too, we again beheld the old Brigg of Doon, over which Tarn galloped in such imminent and awful peril. It is a beautiful object in the landscape, with one high, graceful arch, ivy-grown, and shadowed all over and around with foliage. "When we had waited a good while, the old gardener came, telling us that he had heard an excellent prayer at laying the corner-stone of the new kirk. He now gave us some roses and sweetbrier, and let us out from his pleasant garden. We immediately hastened to Kirk SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. '245 Alloway, whic*? is withiu two or three minutes' walk of Hie monument A few steps ascend from the roadside, through a gate, mto the old graveyard, in the midst of which stands tho kirk. The edifice is wholly roofless, but the side-wall* and gable-ends are quite entire, though portions of thpm are evidently modem restorations. .Never was there a plainer little church, or one with mailer architectural pretension ; no New England meet ing-house has more simplicity in its very self, though poetry and fun hare clambered and clustered so wildly over Kirk Alloway *\iat it is difficult to see it as it actu ally exists. By the by, I do not understand why Satan and an assembly of witches should hold their revels within a consecrated precinct ; but the weird scene has BO established itself in the world's imaginative faith that it must be accepted $>s an authentic incident, in spite of rule and reason to the contrary. Possibly, some carnal minister, some priest of pious aspect and hidden infidelity, had dispelled the consecration of the holy edifice by his pretence of prayer, and thus made it the resort of unhappy ghosts and sorcerers and devils. The interior of the kirk, even now, is applied to quitf as impertinent a purpose as when Satan and the witches used it as a dancing-hall ; for it is divided in the midsf by a wall of stone masonry, and each compartment ha» been converted into a family burial-place. The name on one of the monuments is Crawfurd ; the other bore no inscription. It is impossible not to feel that the^e good people, whoever they way be, had no business ir\ thrus\ their prosaic bones into a spot that belongs to the world, and where their presence jars with the emotions, be they sad or gay, which the pilgrim brings thither. They shut 246 SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. us out from our own precincts, too, — from that inalien able, possession which Burns bestowed in free gift upon mankind, by taking it from the actual earth and annexing it to the domain of imagination. And here these wretched squatters have lain down to their long sleep, after barring each of the two doorways of the kirk with an iron grate ! May their rest be troubled, till they rise and let us in ! Kirk Alloway is inconceivably small, considering how large a space it fills in our imagination before we see it, I paced its length, outside of the wall, and found it only seventeen of my paces, and not more than ten of them in breadth. There seem to have been but very few windows, all of which, if I rightly remember, are now blocked up with mason-work of stone. One mullioned window, tall and narrow, in the eastern gable, might have been seen by Tarn O'Shanter, blazing with dev ilish light, as he approached along the road from Ayr ; and there is a small and square one, on the side nearest the road, into which he might have peered, as he sat on horseback. Indeed, I could easily have looked through it, standing on the ground, had not the opening been walled up. There is an odd kind of belfry at the peak of one of the gables, with the small bell still hanging in it. And this is all that I remember of Kirk Alloway, except that the stones of its material are gray and irregular. The road from Ayr passes Alloway Kirk, and crosses the Doon by a modern bridge, without swerving much from a straight line. To reach the old bridge, it appears to have made a bend, shortly after passing the kirk, and then to have turned sharply towards the river. The new bridge is within a minute's walk of the monument ; and wo went thither, and leaned over its parapet to admire SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 247 the, beautiful Doon, flowing wildly and sweetly between its deep and wooded banks. I never saw a lovelier scene ; although this might have been even lovelier, if a kindly sun had shone upon it. The ivy-grown, ancient bridge, with its high arch, through which we had a pic ture of the river and the green banks beyond, was abso lutely the most picturesque object, in a quiet and gentle way, that ever blessed my eyes. Bonny Doon, with its wooded banks, and the boughs dipping into the water ! The memory of them, at this moment, affects me like the song of birds, and Burns crooning some verses, simple and wild, in accordance with their native melody. It u as impossible to depart without crossing the very bridge of Tarn's adventure ; so we went thither, over a now disused portion of the road, and, standing on the centre of the arch, gathered some ivy-leaves from that sacred spot. This done, we returned as speedily as might be to Ayr, whence, taking the rail, we soon beheld Ailsa Craig rising like a pryamid out of the sea. Drawing nearer to Glasgow, Ben Lomond hove in sight, with a dome-like summit, supported by a shoulder on each side. But a man is better than a mountain ; and we had been holding intercourse, if not with the reality, at least with the stalwart ghost of one of Earth's memorable sons, amid the scenes where he lived and sung. We shall appreciate him better as a poet, hereafter ; for there is no writer whose life, as a man, has so much to do with his fame, and throws such a necessary light upon what ever he has produced. Henceforth, there will be a per sonal warmth for us in everything that he wrote ; and, like his countrymen, we shall know him in a kind of personal way, as if we had shaken hands with him, and felt the tlirill of his actual voice. A LONDON SUBURB. ONE of our English summers looks, in the retrospect, as if it had been patched with more frequent sunshine than the sky of England ordinarily affords ; but I be lieve that it may be only a moral effect, — a " light that never was on sea nor land," — caused by our having found a particularly delightful abode in the neighborhood of London. In order to enjoy it, however, I was compelled to solve the problem of living in two places at once, — an impossibility which I so far accomplished as to vanish, at frequent intervals, out of men's sight and knowledge on one side of England, and take my place in a circle of familiar faces on the other, so quietly that I seemed to have been there all along. It was the easier to get accustomed to our new residence, because it was not only rich in all the material properties of a home, but had also the home-like atmosphere, the household element, which is of too intangible a character to be let even with the most thoroughly furnished lodging-house. A friend had given us his suburban residence, with all its conven iences, elegances, and snuggeries, — its drawing-rooma and library, still warm and bright with the recollection of the genial presences that we had known there, — its closets, chambers, kitchen, and even its wine-cellar, if wo could have availed ourselves of so dear and delicate a A LONDON SUBURB. 249 trust, — its lawn and cosey garden-nooks, and whatever else makes up the multitudinous idea of an English home, — he had transferred it all to us, pilgrims and dusty wayfarers, that we might rest and take our ease during his summer's absence on the Continent. We had long been dwelling in tents, as it were, and morally shiv ering by hearths which, heap the bituminous coal upon them as we might, no blaze could render cheerful. I remember, to this day, the dreary feeling with which I sat by our first English fireside, and watched tne chill and rainy twilight of an autumn day darkening down upon the garden ; while the portrait of the preceding occupant of the house (evidently a most unamiable j>